House Flies and Allies (lat. Muscidae)

2 genus
3 species

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Muscidae are a family of flies found in the superfamily Muscoidea.

Subgroups

Musca domestica

Common House Fly

Coenosia tigrina

Common Tiger Fly

genus

Helina

Phaonia pallida

genus

Thricops

Who belongs here?

species
genus

House Flies and Allies: Subgroups (5)

Identifying characteristics

The antennae are three-segmented and aristate; vein Rs is two-branched, a frontal suture is present, and the calypters are well developed. The arista is often plumose for the entire length. The hypopleuron is usually without bristles; generally, more than one sternopleural bristle is present. The R5 cell is either parallel-sided or narrowed distally. Vein 2A is short and does not reach the wing margin. The Fanniidae, which used to be a subfamily (Fanniinae) of the Muscidae, share these characters, but may be separated from them by the absence of the identifying characteristics for the family Fanniidae.

Biology

Larvae mainly develop in decaying plant material or manure.

Health and economic importance

Adults of many species are passive vectors of pathogens for diseases such as typhoid fever, dysentery, anthrax, and African sleeping sickness. Larvae of some Atherigona species are important pests in cultivation of cereals, like rice and maize.

Evolution

Seven species in six described genera have been recorded from the fossil record. Lambrecht (1980: 369) estimated that the family Muscidae originated as long ago as the Permian, although no fossil record exists for the family any older than the Eocene.

Genera

List of genera according to the Catalogue of Life:

Types

Types in the Natural History Museum of Berlin

Identification Hennig, W. (1955–64). Muscidae in Erwin Lindner, Die Fliegen der Paläarktischen Region 63b,Schweizerbart,Stuttgart. Huckett, H.C. 1965. The Muscidae of northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Diptera). Memoirs of the Entomological Society of Canada 42: 1–369. 23 plates of drawings. Séguy, E., 1937, Diptera, family Muscidae. In: P. Wystmann (ed.), Genera Insectorum, Brussels, 205: 604. Includes a key to world genera. Shinonaga, S. & Kano, R., 1971, Fauna Japonica Muscidae (Insecta:Diptera), Academia press,242pp.+28Plates. Keys to Eastern Palaearctic genera of several subfamilies. Gregor, Fr. et al., 2002 The Muscidae (Diptera) of Central Europe, Brno, Folia Biologia, 107. Biology Use of DNA in forensic entomology Skidmore, P., 1985, The biology of the Muscidae of the world. Junk, Dordrecht. Series entomologica, 29, xiv + 550p.

Links to Genera and species lists

Palaearctic Nearctic Japan

External links

Family description and images Image Gallery from Diptera.info (in Dutch)Muscidae Pictorial atlas explaining Monstrous terms

Ancestry graph

phylums
classes
suborders
families
species
genus

Further Information

„House Flies and Allies“ on wikipedia.org

„House Flies and Allies“ on iNaturalist.org

Copyright and source information

This project wouldn’t exist without Wikipedia and iNaturalist! As citizen scientists, we benefit enormously from the community’s shared knowledge. This article uses material from Wikipedia and iNaturalist. The images on this website are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Muscidae the free encyclopedia Wikipedia which is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). On Wikipedia a list of authors is available.

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