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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Diptera |
Adult insects. Small; robustly-built. Shining, black, rather hairy flies. The face in lateral view not deeply excavated between the antennae and the edge of the mouth. Antennae 3 segmented (the third segment long); ‘modified’; aristate (the arista not plumose); the arista dorsal. The second antennal segment not grooved. The third segment usually elongated. Ptilinal suture clearly defined. Post-vertical orbital bristles present; divergent. Mouthparts functional (proboscis short). The maxillary palps 1 segmented; porrect. Vibrissae present, or absent. Thorax without a continuous dorsal suture; without well defined posterior calli. Wing venation complete, in the sense of exhibiting 1st and 2nd basal, anal and discal cells. Wings with a discal cell; without a sub-apical cell; with a closed anal cell. The anal cell short. The costa with one break (at the end of the sub-costa). Sub-costa apparent; reaching the costa independently of vein 1. The leading edge veins not noticeably stronger than the rest. Wing vein 1 bare. Wing vein 6 present; falling short of the wing margin. Wings with the lower calypter much reduced or absent; unpatterned. Tibiae with a dorsal pre-apical bristle (rarely), or without a dorsal pre-apical bristle. Hind tibiae without strong bristles in the basal 4/5.
Larvae and pupae. The larvae terrestrial; saprophagous, or coprophagous, or mycophagous, or predatory; acephalic. The pupae enclosed within a puparium.
Comments. Small, shining metallic bluish- or greenish-black, rather hairy flies. Ovipositor with non-retractile sheath.
Classification. Suborder Brachycera; Division Muscomorpha Schizophora Acalyptratae; Superfamily Tephritoidea.
British representation. 37 species in Britain. Genera 5; Dasiops, Earomyia, Lonchaea, Protoearomyia, Setisquamalonchaea.
Illustrations. • Lonchaea chorea (from Walker). Lonchaea chorea: head from side (12a), and wing (12b). From Walker (1853, Plate XIV).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Diptera. Version: 14th April 2022. delta-intkey.com’.
