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Asiloidea
The Asiloidea comprise a very large superfamily insects in the order Diptera, the true flies. It has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring worldwide. It includes the family Bombyliidae, the bee flies, which are parasitoids, and the Asilidae, the robber flies, which are predators of other insects. Description Adult Asiloidea are large and showy flies in terms of general appearance. They can be recognised by the following features: antenna with no more than 4 flagellomeres, leg empodium usually setiform or absent; wing with cell cup elongate and vein CuA2 ending freely on the wing margin or meeting with vein A1 at or near the wing margin. In families Mydidae, Apioceridae, and Asilidae, the head is at least slightly concave between the eyes and the ocelli, and both sexes are dichoptic (with a clear separation between the eyes). In Therevidae, Apsilocephalidae, and Scenopinidae, the males are usually holoptic (eyes meet at top of head). Known larvae of this superfamily have p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Therevidae
The Therevidae are a family of flies of the superfamily Asiloidea commonly known as stiletto flies. The family contains about 1,600 described species worldwide, most diverse in arid and semiarid regions with sandy soils. The larvae are predators of insect larvae in soil. Description Adult Therevidae are small- to medium-sized with a body length of 2.4 to 18 mm and a hairy integument. The coloration ranges from shades of yellow to black, but commonly the background colour is masked by the tomentum. The compound eyes are generally larger in males, which in many species are actually holoptic. Females have well-developed compound eyes, but are clearly dichoptic. There are three ocelli. The antennae are relatively short. The scape is elongated, the pedicel very short, and the first flagellomere is conical and elongated, the apex bearing a compound stylus with one to three segments. The scape and pedicel are pubescent; In contrast to the related and confusingly similar famil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bombyliidae
The Bombyliidae are a family of flies, commonly known as bee flies. Adults generally feed on nectar and pollen, some being important pollinators. Larvae are mostly parasitoids of other insects. Overview The Bombyliidae are a large family of flies comprising hundreds of genera, but the life cycles of most species are known poorly, or not at all. They range in size from very small (2 mm in length) to very large for flies (wingspan of some 40 mm).Hull, Frank Montgomery, Bee flies of the world: the genera of the family Bombyliidae Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press 1973 . Downloadable from: https://archive.org/details/beefliesofworl2861973hull When at rest, many species hold their wings at a characteristic "swept back" angle. Adults generally feed on nectar and pollen, some being important pollinators, often with spectacularly long proboscises adapted to plants such as ''Lapeirousia'' species with very long, narrow floral tubes. Unlike butterflies, bee flies hold t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evocoa
''Evocoa'' is a monotypic genus of flies containing the single species ''Evocoa chilensis''. It is the only genus in the family Evocoidae. This fly was described in 2003 with the name ''Ocoa chilensis'',Yeates, D. K., et al. (2003)Ocoidae, a new family of asiloid flies (Diptera: Brachycera: Asiloidea), based on ''Ocoa chilensis'' gen. and sp. n. from Chile, South America.''Systematic Entomology'' 28(4), 417-31. and it was placed in its own family, but that genus name was preoccupied. A new genus name was coined in 2006.Yeates, D. K., et al. (2006)Evocoidae (Diptera: Asiloidea), a new family name for Ocoidae, based on ''Evocoa'', a replacement name for the Chilean genus ''Ocoa'' Yeates, Irwin, and Wiegmann 2003.''Systematic Entomology'' 31(2), 373. This species is a small fly native to Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asilidae
The Asilidae are the robber fly family, also called assassin flies. They are powerfully built, bristly flies with a short, stout proboscis enclosing the sharp, sucking hypopharynx. The name "robber flies" reflects their notoriously aggressive predatory habits; they feed mainly or exclusively on other insects and, as a rule, they wait in ambush and catch their prey in flight. Overview The Asilidae are a family in the order Diptera, the true flies. The common name for members of the family is the robber flies. The Asilidae are cosmopolitan, with over 7000 described species. Latreille was the authority for establishing the family in 1802. The Asilidae, together with Bombyliidae and Therevidae, are the most representative families of the superfamily of Asiloidea and they form one of the most characteristic groups of the lower Brachycera. Robber flies have stout, spiny legs and three simple eyes (ocelli) in a characteristic depression on the tops of their head between their two la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apystomyia
''Apystomyia'' is a genus of flies in the family Apystomyiidae. The genus contains the single living Apystomyiidae species, ''Apystomyia elinguis'', which is primarily found in California. Details of its life history are largely unknown. The extinct genus '' Hilarimorphites'' is known from the Cretaceous Burmese and New Jersey ambers. Formerly placed in the Asiloidea, molecular phylogenetic studies in 2010 placed the genus unambiguously as a sister of the Cyclorrhapha within the clade Eremoneura Eremoneura is a clade of flies within the Brachycera that includes the Empidoidea and the Cyclorrhapha and is a sister of the Asilomorpha. They are thought to have evolved around the Mesozoic. The group includes fossils described in the genus ' .... References External links * Monotypic Brachycera genera Asiloidea genera Taxa named by Axel Leonard Melander {{Asiloidea-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apsilocephalidae
Apsilocephalidae is a family of flies in the superfamily Asiloidea. It was historically treated as a subfamily within Therevidae, but placed in a separate family in 1991, and subsequently recognized as more distantly related. The family contains three extant genera and at least five extinct genera described from the fossil record. Genera These six genera belong to the family Apsilocephalidae: * '' Apsilocephala'' Kröber, 1914 * †'' Burmapsilocephala'' Gaimari & Mostovski, 2000 ( Cenomanian, Burmese amber Burmese amber, also known as Burmite or Kachin amber, is amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar. The amber is dated to around 100 million years ago, during the latest Albian to earliest Cenomanian ages of the mid-Cretaceous period. The ...) * '' Clesthentia'' White, 1915 * '' Clesthentiella'' Nagatomi, Saigusa, Nagatomi & Lyneborg, 1991 * †'' Irwinimyia'' Zhang ''et al.'', 2018 (Cenomanian, Burmese amber) * †'' Kaurimyia'' Winterton & Irwin, 2008 * †'' Kumar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scenopinidae
The Scenopinidae or window flies are a small (about 400 described species) family of flies (Diptera), distributed worldwide. In buildings, they are often taken at windows, hence the common name window flies. The two species with cosmopolitan distributions are associated with the movement of trade goods ('' Scenopinus fenestralis'' and ''S. glabrifrons''). Very little is known of the larval biology; larvae have been found associated with stored-grain pests, in nests of birds and rodents, in beetle larvae burrows in trees and shrubs, and in association with therevid larvae in soil. They may be predators of the larvae of other insects. Adults have sponging mouthparts and are found on open flowers. Description The adults are small insects, usually with the body no longer than 5 mm, glabrous or slightly hairy and with blackish livery. The head is holoptic in the males of most species, and dichoptic in females. It is provided with three ocelli. The pendulous antennae are compose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hilarimorphidae
The Hilarimorphidae or hilarimorphid flies are a family of Diptera. They are of uncertain placement and may be related to the Acroceridae. Most species are Nearctic. Species Genus '' Cretahilarimorpha'' Myskowiak, Azar & Nel, 2016 *'' Cretahilarimorpha lebanensis'' Myskowiak, Azar & Nel, 2016 Genus '' Hilarimorpha'' Schiner, 1860 Genus '' Hilarimorphites'' Grimaldi & Cumming, 1999 — extinct, known from Cretaceous amber of New Jersey and Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai .... References Brachycera families Asiloidea Taxa named by Friedrich Georg Hendel {{Asiloidea-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apioceridae
The Apioceridae, or flower-loving flies, are a small (about 150 species) family of flies, all in the single genus ''Apiocera''. They occur mostly in dry, sandy habitats in the deserts of North America, South America, and Australia. Other genera formerly placed in Apioceridae are now in Mydidae. Diversity and biogeography The roughly 150 species of ''Apiocera'' are divided into four subgenera, each restricted to a different continent. '' Apiocera'' is found in Australia, '' Ripidosyrma'' in southern Africa, '' Pyrocera'' in North America, and '' Anypenus'' in South America. Biology ''Apiocera'' species are found in sandy, arid and semiarid habitats. Despite the common name, most ''Apiocera'' species never visit flowers, but rather are found running on the ground near sparse vegetation, or feeding on honeydew beneath aphid-infested plants. They are often seen drinking from damp sand with their sponge-like mouthparts. The larvae of '' Apiocera maritima'' are found in sand near ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sister Group
In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and taxon B are sister groups to each other. Taxa A and B, together with any other extant or extinct descendants of their most recent common ancestor (MRCA), form a monophyletic group, the clade AB. Clade AB and taxon C are also sister groups. Taxa A, B, and C, together with all other descendants of their MRCA form the clade ABC. The whole clade ABC is itself a subtree of a larger tree which offers yet more sister group relationships, both among the leaves and among larger, more deeply rooted clades. The tree structure shown connects through its root to the rest of the universal tree of life. In cladistic standards, taxa A, B, and C may represent specimens, species, genera, or any other taxonomic units. If A and B are at the same taxo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extinction
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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