[1][2] Chironomoidea have four life stages: the egg, the worm-like larva, the pupa and the winged adult.

Using the family Chironomidae as an example, larvae occur most commonly in aquatic vegetation and benthic debris, but also in sand covered in fine organic material, pools on granite outcrops, wood snags, muddy lake beds and hygropetric seepages.

Larvae may feed on deposits of organic detritus (gathering collectors), filter diatoms and fine particles of detritus from the water column (filtering collectors), chew or bore into live or dead plant matter (shredders), scrape algae, bacteria and diatoms from surfaces (scrapers) or prey on other invertebrates (predators).

Analyses of the male genital tract,[7] ribosomal RNA[8] and transcriptome[9] have showed that the superfamily is not monophyletic.

A fossil chironomoid larva of the genus Anisinodus (family unknown) indicates that the superfamily existed during the early Middle Triassic.