Gigantodax

Gigantodax is a genus of 68 species of black flies distributed along the Andes from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. The taxonomy of the genus was revised in 1989 by an academic paper published in the bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. In 1997, researchers from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Rio Negro, Argentina collected larvae of G. marginalis and other fly species in Lanin National Park, Neuquén Province. After a close examination included chromosome mapping, they reported: These South American researchers also analyzed G. marginalis, G. fulvescens, and G. chilensis and reported that Cnesia, another Prosimuliini genus, is sympatric with southern populations of Gigantodax and that both genera breed on both sides of the Andean range in Argentina and Chile in subantarctic Patagonia. They also reported that Gigantodax species in this area are also sympatric with Simulium. These genus was re-examined in 2007 by entomologits from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil who explained that in their paper: