This trophic and habitat diversity has been attributed to the larvae’s ability to use silk to construct capture nets, retreats, cases, and pupal shelters. Similarly, the larvae exploit a wide variety of aquatic microhabitats. They display a wide diversity of trophic adaptations, being surpassed only by aquatic Diptera in the type of food eaten and the manner in which it is obtained. Trichoptera larvae are important participants in energy flow and nutrient dynamics in the aquatic environment. Recent reviews of Trichoptera diversity, biology, and natural history include those of Wiggins (2004) and Holzenthal et. Only a single species has been reported from a container habitat (bromeliad tanks) and none of the Neotropical species is known from the marine littoral, unlike some Australian and New Zealand species. These species often occur above the waterline, where a few venture quite far from the aquatic habitat. There are also species that frequent the spray and splash zones of waterfalls and similar torrential situations as well as hygropetric habitats. However, floodplain lakes and pools, swamps and marshes in lowland areas, and mountain lakes all harbor species. In addition to lotic species, those that frequent standing waters also occur, but this lentic fauna is not as diverse as that of northern, Holarctic lakes and ponds. A very few species can be found in waters of thermal origin or with water chemistry that has been affected by volcanic activity. Intermittent streams also support a trichopterous fauna, with a few species especially adapted to seasonal drying. It is in intermediate sized, forested, mountain streams where the fauna seems to reach its greatest diversity. In the Neotropics, larvae can be found in small trickles and seeps in the high Andean páramo, down to the very large, slowly flowing, lowland rivers, and all kinds of rivers and streams between these extremes. These immature stages are ubiquitous in the world’s freshwaters, but are especially diverse in rivers and streams. Trichoptera are an order of holometabolous insects that have aquatic egg, larval, and pupal stages.
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