The Culicondor

Eagleflies (Aquiloculicinae), though the least diverse of the three Pugilopsid subfamilies, have found themselves at the top of the flying food chain. With no flying vertebrates, they've been free to expand into raptorial niches that insects on Earth can't compete for. Some have reached body masses rivaling the largest flying insects of the Carboniferous period, such as the Gold-Spotted Eaglefly (Thyreoconcutor aureomaculatus), which weighs around 125 grams. This species hunts tough prey like its ancestors did, but like many eagleflies it has expanded its diet; only the most basal members of the subfamily still stick to castlebugs exclusively. A large species like T. aureomaculatus can eat other isopods like stagmice, flightless insects like dipterantulas, and even small rats, birds, and lizards if it's lucky. But its dietary experiments are nothing compared to those of the most derived genus in its subfamily: the Sea Eagleflies (Teratoculex).

Sea eagleflies represent a very recent radiation beginning just under a million years ago. They originated on rocky shores, where they hunted all sorts of arthropods, though at the time this ancestral form was too small to tackle vertebrates. This changed quickly as its descendants took over various littoral ecosystems, adapting to feed on shoreline creatures of all varieties. The group that remained restricted to slime-cliff environments soon found itself in an arms race with washroaches, which began evolving to become more poisonous and better at hiding away in the tiniest crevices where they'd remain unseen from above. One group of local sea-eagleflies became small and resistant to this poison, but a different branch remained large and began flying further away in search of easier food sources. With its congenerics already occupying all other coastal environments, there was nowhere left to go but out to sea.

The Culicondor (T. thermoequitarus), while lighter than many of its continental cousins, has the longest wingspan of any insect ever, reaching a width of 90 centimeters from tip to tip. It is not exclusively found at sea, for its main diet is carrion of all kinds, but competition for scavenger niches is intense on land, so it mainly sticks to carcasses it finds either on the open water or washed ashore by waves. Because its food is already dead when it finds it, it can't simply inject a dose of digestive flagelloculicins and wait for them to spread through its target's bloodstream or hemolymph. Instead, it uses its saw-like maxillae to make long, jagged cuts, which it fills with a steady stream of vomit. After a short time, the result is mass of gooey, half-digested (and often half-rotten) soup where solid meat once was. Always looking to save on energy, it preferentially seeks out carcasses that have decayed significantly, as their soft, putrid flesh takes less work to render fluid enough to eat. Using this method, the culicondor may consume up to half its body mass in a sitting, becoming physogastric in the process. Weighed down by its meal, it must get a running start to successfully take off, but once it's in the air, it can soar for hundreds of kilometers on thermal air currents. This species has achieved a cosmopolitan distribution, with populations in and around all major water bodies, plus a few inland populations wherever larger scavengers are absent. As Apterra's megafauna continue increasing in size, numbers, and diversity over the course of the Arthrocene and beyond, it's likely that the culicondor's niche will remain stable for millions of years to come.