Including flies and mosquitoes, dipterans are perhaps some of the most irritating insects to humans.
Usually very small to medium-sized insects, the Diptera is one of the largest and most highly diversified orders of insects, with nearly 100,000 living species described.
The compound eyes are very large in dipterans. The mouthparts in adults are suctorial, and they may include a style for piercing in some species. The fore wings are membranous, with the hind wings modified into halteres, small knob-like structure that oscillate in flight as balancing organs.
The Diptera may be traced back to the Triassic. The fossil record in the Tertiary suggests that most of the extant families existed in the Cretaceous.
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