The firebrat is a small insect, in the order Zygentoma.
The name Apterygota is sometimes applied to a former subclass of small, agile insects, distinguished from other insects by their lack of wings in the present and in their evolutionary history; notable examples are the silverfish, the firebrat, and the jumping bristletails. Their first known occurrence in the fossil record is during the Devonian period, 417–354 million years ago. The group Apterygota is not a clade; it is paraphyletic, and not recognized in modern classification schemes. As defined, the group contains two separate clades of wingless insects: Archaeognatha comprises jumping bristletails, while Zygentoma comprises silverfish and firebrats. The Zygentoma are in the clade Dicondylia with winged insects, a clade that includes all other insects, while Archaeognatha is sister to this lineage.
The Archaeognatha are an order of apterygotes, known by various common names such as jumping bristletails. Among extant insect taxa they are some of the most evolutionarily primitive; they appeared in the Middle Devonian period at about the same time as the arachnids. Specimens that closely resemble extant species have been found as both body and trace fossils in strata from the remainder of the Paleozoic Era and more recent periods. For historical reasons an alternative name for the order is Microcoryphia.
Eristalis is a large genus of hoverflies, family Syrphidae, in the order Diptera. Several species are known as drone flies because they bear a resemblance to honeybee drones.
Lepismatidae is a family of primitive wingless insects with about 190 described species. This family contains the two most familiar members of the order Zygentoma: the silverfish and the firebrat. It is one of five families in the order Zygentoma.
Zygentoma are an order in the class Insecta, and consist of about 550 known species. The Zygentoma include the so-called silverfish or fishmoths, and the firebrats. A conspicuous feature of the order are the three long caudal filaments. The two lateral filaments are cerci, and the medial one is an epiproct or appendix dorsalis. In this they resemble the Archaeognatha, although the cerci of Zygentoma, unlike in the latter order, are nearly as long as the epiproct.
Ctenolepisma is a genus of primitive insects in the order Zygentoma, closely related to the silverfish and firebrat but less reliant on human habitation, some species being found both indoors and outdoors and some found exclusively outdoors. The genus is distributed nearly worldwide in warm regions. Australia lacks native Ctenolepisma, but is home to introduced species.
Ctenolepisma lineatum is a species of insect of the order Zygentoma. It is similar to the closely related silverfish but can be distinguished by being rather stouter and less shiny with all appendages noticeably longer. The abdomen is often marked with dark brown lines and the species is sometimes called four-lined silverfish.
A silverfish is a wingless insect in the order Zygentoma. The same name can be applied to many species in the order as a whole, which comprises the families Lepismatidae, Nicoletiidae, Lepidotrichidae, Maindroniidae and Protrinemuridae.
The silverfish is a species of small, primitive, wingless insect in the order Zygentoma. Its common name derives from the insect's silvery light grey colour, combined with the fish-like appearance of its movements. The scientific name indicates that the silverfish's diet consists of carbohydrates such as sugar or starches. While the common name silverfish is used throughout the global literature to refer to various species of Zygentoma, the Entomological Society of America restricts use of the term solely for Lepisma saccharinum.
Eristalis horticola is a Palearctic species of hoverfly.
Tricholepisma is a genus of primitive insects belonging to the family Lepismatidae.
Nicoletiidae is a family of primitive insects belonging to the order Zygentoma. These insects live primarily underground, under detritus, or in caves. A few species are recorded as commensals inside nests of social insects, such as the species Allotrichotriura saevissima which lives inside fire ant nests. Nicoletiidae don't have eyes as other existing species and they lack pigment. They have medium size, with extended antennae and terminal filaments. Coletinia, a genus of this family, has many characters including a body length that ranges between 10 and 15mm. They may have yellowish pigmentation but most of them are transparent. They have bilayered and very large acrosome, a short nucleus including chromatin being really condensed with tubular invaginations and sperm length and head size classified as short.
Liancalus is a genus of flies in the family Dolichopodidae. It contains at least 21 species distributed worldwide except in Australasia and Oceania. The genus includes some of the largest species in the family, with body length approaching 12 mm in some species.
Tricholepidion is a genus of wingless insect belonging to Zygentoma, with only a single described species T. gertschi, native to the northern coast of California in Western North America. It lives under dead bark and in rotting wood of conifers in mesophytic forests. It is alternatively considered the only living member of the family Lepidotrichidae, which also includes Lepidotrix from Eocene aged European amber, or the only member of the family Tricholepidiidae. The taxonomic position of Tricholepidion is uncertain, in some molecular phylogenetics studies it has been recovered as less closely related to flying insects (Pterygota) than the rest of Zygentoma is, rendering Zygentoma paraphyletic. Each compound eye contains ~40 ommatidia, and they have three ocelli. Scales on the body are absent. Unlike Archaeognatha and the other families of Zygentoma, which have three- and sometimes two-segmented tarsi, they have five-segmented tarsi like many winged insects.
Thermobia aegyptiaca is a species of silverfish in the family Lepismatidae. The species was described by Hippolyte Lucas in 1840 based on specimens collected in Egypt. Thermobia aegyptiaca is distributed in Africa and the eastern Mediterranean Basin.
Colpocephalum is a genus of chewing louse. Christian Ludwig Nitzsch named the genus in 1818. The Plenary Powers of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature selected Colpocephalum zebraBurmeister, 1838 as its type species in the 1950s. There are approximately 135 species in this genus, and they are ectoparasites of birds in at least a dozen different orders.
Ctenolepisma longicaudatum, generally known as the gray silverfish, long-tailed silverfish or paper silverfish, is a species of Zygentoma in the family Lepismatidae. It was described by the German entomologist Karl Leopold Escherich in 1905 based on specimens collected in South Africa, but is found worldwide as synanthrope in human housings.
Sceletolepisma is a genus of primitive insects closely related to the silverfish and firebrat but less reliant on human habitation, some species being found both indoors and outdoors and some found exclusively outdoors. The genus is distributed nearly worldwide in warm regions.
Cretalepisma is an extinct genus of wingless insect belonging to family Lepismatidae in the order Zygentoma. It contains one species, Cretalepisma kachinicum. Cretalepisma is known from a single female specimen, preserved in Cretaceous aged Burmese amber. The specimen has a total body length of 9.7 millimeters, almost twice that of Burmalepisma.
