Nannochoristidae
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Nannochoristidae is a primitive family of scorpionflies that have many unusual traits. It is a tiny, relict family of about eight species, with members of the genus Nannochorista occurring in New Zealand, southeastern Australia, Tasmania, and Chile. The adults look like scorpionflies with more pointed elongate wings. Most mecopteran larvae are eruciform, or shaped like caterpillars. Nannochoristid larvae, however, are elateriform, or shaped like a wireworm or click beetle larva. They are also the only entirely aquatic Mecoptera. They are predatory, primarily on the larvae of aquatic Diptera. They are locally common; there is a story of a researcher in New Zealand who got his nannochoristid specimens from his back yard.
Some research suggests that nannochoristids are the only holometabolous insects that have true larval compound eyes <ref>Melzer, R. R., H. F. Paulus, & N. P. Kristensen (1994). The larval eye of nannochoristid scorpionflies (Insecta, Mecoptera). Acta Zoologica 75: 201.</ref>. All other eyed larvae have stemmata, which are structurally different from adult compound eyes with ommatidia. This is unusual since most adult features are present as imaginal discs in larvae and not formed until pupation. The presence of compound eyes in nannochoristid larvae suggest that the timing of the development of adult features can be initiated earlier in development, which has startling implications for insect evolutionary development.
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