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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Diptera |
~Anisopodidae
Gnat-like flies.
Adult insects. Antennae 8–16 segmented; long and threadlike; ‘simple’. Ocelli present. Eyes rounded, well separated. The maxillary palps 3–5 segmented; drooping. Thorax without a continuous dorsal suture. Wing veins reaching the margin 9, or 10 (?). Wings without a discal cell; without a closed anal cell. The costa not extending around the entire wing. The leading edge veins markedly stronger than the rest (?). Wing vein 6 present; reaching the wing margin. Media and cubitus veins not connected by a cross-vein or a fusion. Wings with the lower calypter much reduced or absent. Tibiae apically spurred. Feet without a triple pad. Abdomen constricted basally.
Larvae and pupae. The larvae terrestrial; saprophagous, or mycophagous (feeding on exuded sap, and fungi on decaying wood); eucephalic. The pupae without a puparium.
Classification. Suborder Nematocera; Division Psychodomorpha; Superfamily Anisopodoidea.
British representation. 3 species in Britain. Genera 1; Mycetobia.
Illustrations. • Mycetobia pallipes (from Walker). Mycetobia pallipes, with details of antenna (4a), hind leg (4b), wing (4c), head in oblique view (4d), and palp (4e). From Walker (1856, Plate XXII), 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’.
