The Empidoidea are a large

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gr ...

superfamily SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...

true flies Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced ...

, the

sister taxon 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 ...

to the

Muscomorpha The Brachyceran infraorder Muscomorpha is a large and diverse group of flies, containing the bulk of the Brachycera, and, most of the known flies. It includes a number of the most familiar flies, such as the housefly, the fruit fly, and the blo ...

(

Cyclorrhapha Cyclorrhapha is an unranked taxon within the infraorder Muscomorpha. They are called "Cyclorrhapha" ('circular-seamed flies') with reference to the circular aperture through which the adult escapes the puparium. This is a circumscriptional name t ...

). These two groups are sometimes united in the unranked taxon

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 ' ...

. There are some 10,000 known

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

within Empidoidea,Moulton & Wiegmann (2007) which are represented on all continents except Antarctica. They are known to have existed since the Jurassic period.Grimaldi & Engel (2005) Empidoidea has been subject to much debate regarding its phylogeny. Based on morphology alone, three major hypotheses had been proposed until 2007 and seemed to be consensus for some time—however, in 2018, Wahlberg & Johanson published the most current phylogeny supported by extensive genetic data, changing the relationship between quite a few families and tribes.Wahlberg & Johanson (2018)

Description

The majority of these insects are

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill t ...

y, often with large

compound eye A compound eye is a visual organ found in arthropods such as insects and crustaceans. It may consist of thousands of ommatidia, which are tiny independent photoreception units that consist of a cornea, lens, and photoreceptor cells which disti ...

s (sometimes covering almost the entire surface of the head), and tend to be associated with moist,

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...

habitats. Many have a well-developed anal lobe in the wings, and/or a small but distinct anal cell. Several species within Empidoidea are of particular interest to ethologists and ecologists, due to elaborate mating rituals and life histories involving freshwater.

Systematics

The most familiar families in the group are the Empididae and

Dolichopodidae Dolichopodidae, the long-legged flies, are a large, cosmopolitan family of true flies with more than 7,000 described species in about 230 genera. The genus ''Dolichopus'' is the most speciose, with some 600 species. Dolichopodidae generally are ...

, both of which occur worldwide and contain thousands of

. The smaller families were formerly included in the Empididae, but have since been accorded family status.Sinclair & Cumming (2006) The monophyly of most of these groups have since been confirmed by subsequent studies. The Brachystomatinae and

Microphorinae Microphorinae is a subfamily of flies in the family Dolichopodidae. It is part of an expanded concept of the family, Dolichopodidae ''sensu lato'', though it was previously considered a family of its own. Genera The subfamily includes seven gene ...

are sometimes elevated to full family status, too, but this would apparently make the Empididae and Dolichopodidae

paraphyletic In taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In ...

and thus they are retained as subfamilies here. Atelestidae forming the sister group to the rest of Empidoidea is a unanimous result in all studies that have utilized molecular data. The families are: * Atelestidae * Hybotidae – dance flies *

– long-legged flies (including Microphoridae) * Empididae – dagger flies and balloon flies (including Brachystomatidae) * Homalocnemiidae * Oreogetonidae * Ragadidae Based on the most recent phylogenetic studies, the internal classification of Empidoidea is as follows:

Footnotes

References

* (2007): The phylogenetic relationships of flies in the superfamily Empidoidea (Insecta: Diptera). '' Mol. Phylogenet. Evol.'' 43(3): 701–713. (HTML abstract) * (2005): Evolution of the Insects. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. * (2006): The morphology, higher-level phylogeny and classification of the Empidoidea (Diptera). ''

Zootaxa ''Zootaxa'' is a peer-reviewed scientific mega journal for animal taxonomists. It is published by Magnolia Press (Auckland, New Zealand). The journal was established by Zhi-Qiang Zhang in 2001 and new issues are published multiple times a wee ...

'' 1180: 1–172
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* (2018): Molecular phylogenetics reveals novel relationships within Empidoidea (Diptera). ''

Systematic Entomology ''Systematic Entomology'' is a scientific journal covering the field of systematic entomology, published by the Royal Entomological Society of London. Having begun in 1932 as '' Proceedings of the Royal Entomological Society of London, Series B: ...

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{{Taxonbar, from=Q1644617 Diptera superfamilies