Rheocricotopus Brundin, 1956

Namayandeh, Armin, Hudson, Patrick L., Bogan, Daniel L. & Hudson, John P., 2024, Chironomidae (Diptera: Insecta) of Alaska, USA, with descriptions of new species and a checklist, Zootaxa 5511 (1), pp. 1-95 : 72

Rheocricotopus Brundin, 1956

We collected Rheocricotopus (s.s.) effusus (Walker, 1856) , Rheocricotopus (s.s.) eminellobus Saether, 1969 , and Rheocricotopus (s.s.) pauciseta Saether, 1969 , all new faunistic records for Alaska. We collected R. effusus adults near a tributary of Margaret Creek on Revillagigedo Island in early April and from the Yukon River delta in mid-July. We collected R. pauciseta adults near the outlet of Turner Lake in early August, from a tributary to Margaret Creek in late April. In Anchorage, we collected adults of this species in late April in Chester Creek and a pupa from Little Rabbit Creek in late May. We collected Rheocricotopus eminellobus Saether, 1969 larvae from a tributary to Summit Creek in Lake Clark National Preserve, a first-order stream on a tributary to Fire Cove on Revillagigedo Island in Southeast Alaska, and from Little Rabbit and South Fork Campbell Creeks in Anchorage. Namayandeh et al. (2012) found that the larvae of R. eminellobus inhabit leaf litter in headwater streams.

Rheocricotopus larvae have been reported from the Arctic Coastal Plain (AWQMS, 2005), Denali National Park (Brabett & Ourso 2013), Tattler Creek in Denali National Park, the Koskokwin River ( Hayford et al. 2014), the Indian River watershed in Sitka, and tributaries to the Stuyahok River and Upper Talarik Creek in Southwest Alaska There is also a DNA barcode record from a stream near Soldotna ( Arctos 2023).