The

Brachycera The Brachycera are a suborder of the order Diptera. It is a major suborder consisting of around 120 families. Their most distinguishing characteristic is reduced antenna segmentation. Description A summary of the main physical characteristic ...

n infraorder Tabanomorpha is a small group that consists primarily of two large families, the

Tabanidae Horse-flies or horseflies are true flies in the family Tabanidae in the insect order Diptera. They are often large and agile in flight, and only the female horseflies bite animals, including humans, to obtain blood. They prefer to fly in su ...

(horse and deer flies) and

Rhagionidae Rhagionidae or snipe flies are a small family of flies. They get their name from the similarity of their often prominent proboscis that looks like the beak of a snipe. Description Rhagionidae are medium-sized to large flies with slender bodi ...

(snipe flies), and an assortment of very small affiliated families, most of which have been (or could be, or sometimes are) included within the Rhagionidae.

Description

Adult Tabanomorpha typically have a convex face and antenna bearing styli. The forewing has a costa along its entire perimeter (though its posterior portion may be weaker), while the tarsi have pulvilliform empodia. Males have eyes that are nearly or fully holoptic and have an endoaedeagal process which is usually quite long and distinct. Females have the cercus always flattened.

Larval A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. T ...

Tabanomorpha have a retractable head capsule and a brush of setae just under the fold of the integument.

Ecology

Adults of most species feed on nectar and pollen, but blood-feeding (

hematophagy Hematophagy (sometimes spelled haematophagy or hematophagia) is the practice by certain animals of feeding on blood (from the Greek words αἷμα ' "blood" and φαγεῖν ' "to eat"). Since blood is a fluid tissue rich in nutritious pro ...

) occurs in the majority of female

, some Rhagionidae and an

Athericidae Athericidae is a small family of flies known as water snipe flies or ibis flies. They used to be placed in the family Rhagionidae, but were removed by Stuckenberg in 1973. They are now known to be more closely related to Tabanidae. Species of Ath ...

. Blood-feeding is believed to have evolved multiple times within the group. Larvae are mostly

predators 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 th ...

in terrestrial, aquatic or semi-aquatic habitats.

Classification

The infraorder

Vermileonomorpha The Brachyceran family Vermileonidae (the sole family in the infraorder Vermileonomorpha) is a small family of uncertain affinities and unusual biology. It includes fewer than 80 described species, most of them rare and with restricted distributi ...

is often included within the Tabanomorpha, though the most recent classifications place them as its

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 ...

. There are also some classifications that place the Nemestrinoidea within the Tabanomorpha, though this is not widely accepted. There are two superfamily-level lineages currently recognized within Tabanomorpha; the Tabanoidea and the Rhagionoidea (the latter comprising Austroleptidae, Bolbomyiidae, and

).Kerr, P.H. 2010: Phylogeny and classification of Rhagionidae, with implications for Tabanomorpha (Diptera: Brachycera)
''Zootaxa''
2592: 1–133.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q855002 Insect infraorders