What is the tiniest flying insect?
The smallest insects are fairy flies, which are insects that parasitize other insects’ eggs by laying their eggs inside them. Fairy flies are only 1/5 of a millimeter in length. Many beetles are less than one millimetre in length, and the North American Feather-winged Beetle Nanosella fungi, at 0.25mm, is a serious contender for the title of smallest insect in the world. Other insect orders which contain extremely small members are the Diptera (True Flies) and the Collembola (Springtails). The “feather-winged” beetles and the “battledore-wing fairy flies” are smaller than some species of protozoa (single cell creatures). Megaphragma caribea a hymenopteran parasite from Guadeloupe, measuring out at a huge 0.17 mm long is in contention for the smallest insect.
