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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Diptera |
Musidoridae
Pointed-wing Flies.
Adult insects. Very small to small; slender-bodied to robustly-built; not stilt-legged. The face in lateral view not deeply excavated between the antennae and the edge of the mouth. Antennae 3 segmented (the third segment rounded or globular); ‘modified’; with a non-annulated terminal segment; aristate (long); the arista apical to dorsal (being sometimes sub-apical). Ptilinal suture absent or weakly defined. The maxillary palps 1 segmented; porrect. Wings without a discal cell; without a sub-apical cell; without a closed anal cell. Sub-costa apparent; reaching the costa independently of vein 1 (almost?), or terminating blind. The leading edge veins not noticeably stronger than the rest. Wing vein 3 distally forked. Feet without a triple pad.
Larvae and pupae. The larvae terrestrial; saprophagous; hemicephalic. The pupae enclosed within a puparium.
Comments. Small brownish or yellowish, bristly flies, with a more or less spherical third antennal segment and sharply pointed wings.
Classification. Suborder Brachycera; Division Muscomorpha Aschiza; Superfamily Lonchopteroidea.
British representation. 7 species in Britain. Genera 1; Lonchoptera.
Illustrations. • Lonchoptera lutea: B. Ent. 761. • Lonchoptera lutea: B. Ent. 761, legend+text. • Lonchoptera lutea: B. Ent. 761, text cont.. • Lonchoptera lutea (from Walker). 1a-f and k, Lonchoptera lutea, male: 1a, the head from below; 1b, side view of the proboscis with the elongate labella, and the palp parallel with them and a little shorter; 1c, the same viewed edgeways from above, with the labrum (?) disengaged; 1d, the labrum (or clypeus ?) and tongue viewed edgeways from above; 1e, the labrum alone; 1f, an antenna with 3-jointed arista; 1k, extremity of the male abdomen. 1g-i, Lonchoptera lutea, female: 1g, wing; 1h, vagina, the tentacula indistinct; 1i, the same from the opposite direction, with the short tentacula forced open. From Walker (1851, Plate VIII), with 2mm scale added.
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’.
