Caddisfly Genome Project

Image source: Sanja565658 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

Caddisfly (Limnephilus lunatus)

Contact: Oliver Niehuis

Researchers involved:
Size (or size of nearest relative):

Keywords (and why important):

Representative of Trichoptera: Limnephilus lunatus is a common species and a typical case-bearing caddisfly. Like almost all Trichoptera, this species has an aquatic larva. The adults are moth-like and can be found in the vicinity of the waters, in which their larvae develop. Many caddisfly species play an important role as bioindicators in limnological studies. The phylogeny and evolution of the caddisfies is, however, still poorly understood. Together with Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), Trichoptera form a well-supported clade within holometabolous insects called Amphiesmenoptera.

Trichoptera are important to understand the evolution of heterogametic females and of the biosynthesis of silk, both features Trichoptera share with Lepidoptera. Trichoptera are further important as outgroup to better understand the evolution of Lepidoptera.

Genomic Resources


For the most current version of the assembly, please use 'NCBI BioProject' (find link below). If the assembly is unavailable in the BioProject page (it is still being worked on), you can look under the 'BCM-HGSC data' (find link below) for intermediate versions of the assembly.


Web Apollo: A web-based sequence annotation editor for community annotation

For information about Web Apollo, please contact Monica Poelchau.

Additional Resources

Learn more about the caddisfly