Home › Volumes › Insects › Caddis Flies

Family Sericostomatidae

The caddis flies of this group are usually excessively hairy. They vary much in form. Their larvae usually inhabit streams and not ponds, and the flies are generally found near the breeding places. The larval cases are usually of the ordinary cylindrical form. They are free, and generally made of sand or small stones, but sometimes the cases are broad and flattened and sometimes they are quadrangular, and the most remarkable of all are those which are constructed in the shape of a snail-shell. An almost perfect helix is made by some of them, and it is one of these which, as mentioned above, was described by a conchologist as a new species of snail. That was at a time when shell students described the shells and cared nothing for the animal which inhabits them. We have in the United States a number of species in this family, separated into nine genera, most of the forms being northern, although the two typical Sericostomas inhabit Georgia.