Arnett's "American Insects"(1) gives the names of all three N. A. Negha species (see here). Of the three---N. inflata, N. longicornis, and N. meridionalis---the later two are specifically stated to have CA in their range. Again, among these epithets, the name longicornis seems descriptively compelling vis-a-vis your shots of the accompanying male...though of course that's just circumstantial at this point. I trust this will eventually get figured out :-)

...I hadn't viewed that reference before! Nice to get a hint at the range distribution. It would be awfully cool if my specimen turned out to be a match with such an aptly-named species. Finding myself further intrigued by the matter of the gender differences in antennae length, I did a bit of investigating and noted the following based on my own collection of snakefly photos, as well as those on BugGuide:

1) It does not appear that there is a significant difference between genders in the length of Agulla species' antennae.

2) Other images of Negha in the guide support the notion that the male antennae are consistently longer than the females.

Of course, this is just speculation based on a small sampling of specimens... Oh, also, I found an intriguing (though unreferenced) statement on this blog, which reads:
Another difference between Inocellidae and Raphidiidae is that inocellids are larger than raphidiids, and may have longer, thicker antennae.

And they seem to have merit to me, although I too am just an amateur speculating on quite limited observations.

Nevertheless, at least the last italicized sentence in your comment above is supported (nearly verbatim) on pg 363 of Borror & DeLong(1) (I suspect that was the source of the blogger's info).

PS: Our interchange prompted me to dig among old photos and find a shot of a Negha I had taken 4+ years ago. It was just a "snakefly" to me then...I had no idea of any nuances beyond that back then :-)

I would really love to be able to ID this specimen to species. I have found several references on North American-based websites that list individual species in checklists or research papers, so it must be possible to narrow the genus down. Thus far, I have been unable to locate any information regarding a key for this family or specific details on which species might be present in California. I don't suppose you have any knowledge and/or resources that could help me in my quest?

no such knowledge and/or resources here...

...I know you'd help if you could. I went ahead and posted my question to the General Discussion forum, so maybe someone else will come up with something.

and i e-mailed Dr. Ulrike Aspöck this morning -- who knows...

I'll be heading up to visit the South Dakota State University library this week sometime, they have a large collection of entomology publications, I'll see if I can get you and ID then...

of both of you! Thank you =v= and Michael for going the extra mile for me on this ID. I know BugGuide is supposed to be mostly about the photos, but for me it's really about the people -- people who are interested in the same thing and willing to help one another solve the mysteries of the insect world.