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Hippoboscoidea is a superfamily of the Calyptratae. The flies in this superfamily are blood-feeding obligate parasites of their hosts. Four families are often placed here:
Thomas Bainbrigge Fletcher was an English entomologist. Although an amateur lepidopterist who worked in the Royal Navy, he became an expert on "microlepidoptera" and was appointed as the second Imperial Entomologist in India to succeed Harold Maxwell Lefroy. Although only an amateur entomologist, he is credited with reorganizing entomological research in India by coordinating and directing research, efficient sharing of findings and a reduction in duplication of research work.
Hippoboscidae, the louse flies or keds, are obligate parasites of mammals and birds. In this family, the winged species can fly at least reasonably well, though others with vestigial or no wings are flightless and highly apomorphic. As usual in their superfamily Hippoboscoidea, most of the larval development takes place within the mother's body, and pupation occurs almost immediately.
The Streblidae are a family of flies in the superfamily Hippoboscoidea, and together with their relatives the Nycteribiidae, are known as bat flies. They are winged or wingless ectoparasites of bats, and often have long legs. They appear to be host-specific, with different species of bat flies occurring only on particular species of bat hosts, sometimes with multiple species of flies sharing a host bat.
Nycteribiidae is a family of the true fly superfamily Hippoboscoidea are known as "bat flies", together with their close relatives the Streblidae. As the latter do not seem to be a monophyletic group, it is conceivable that bat flies cannot be united into a single family.
The dwarf dog-faced bat is a species of free-tailed bat from South America. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay, typically at lower elevations. It is one of two species in the genus Molossops, the other being the rufous dog-faced bat. Three subspecies are often recognized, though mammalogist Judith Eger considers it monotypic with no subspecies. It is a small free-tailed bat, with a forearm length of 28.9–32.5 mm (1.14–1.28 in) and a weight of 5–8 g (0.18–0.28 oz); males are larger than females. It is brown, with paler belly fur and darker back fur. Its wings are unusual for a free-tailed bat, with exceptionally broad wingtips. Additionally, it has low wing loading, meaning that it has a large wing surface area relative to its body weight. Therefore, it flies more similarly to a vesper bat than to other species in its own family. As it forages at night for its insect prey, including moths, beetles, and others, it uses two kinds of frequency-modulated echolocation calls: one type is to navigate in open areas and to search for prey, while the other type is used for navigating in cluttered areas or while approaching a prey item.
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The lesser bamboo bat or lesser flat-headed bat is one of the smallest species of vesper bat, and is native to Southeast Asia.
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Bat flies are members of the insect order Diptera, the true flies, which are external parasites of bats. Two families of flies are exclusively bat flies: Nycteribiidae and Streblidae. Bat flies have a cosmopolitan distribution, meaning that they are found around the world. Nycteribiidae and Streblidae are members of the superfamily Hippoboscoidea, along with the families Hippoboscidae and Glossinidae.
Epithalassius is a genus of flies in the family Dolichopodidae, with eight known species. They are generally found in the Palaearctic, occurring on sand beaches near the coast. An exception to this is E. africus, which was described from a damaged female specimen collected near Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo. The generic assignment of this African species has been doubted. E. corsicanus has also been recorded from Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, and is probably an introduced species to the island.
Vetimicrotes is a genus of flies in the family Dolichopodidae. It is distributed in the Palaearctic realm. The genus was originally named Microtes by Theodor Becker in 1918. Afterwards, the name was found to be preoccupied by the grasshopper genus Microtes, so it was renamed to Vetimicrotes by C. E. Dyte in 1980.
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Enischnomyia is an extinct genus of bat fly in the family Streblidae. At the time of its description the new genus comprised a single species, Enischnomyia stegosoma, known from a single Miocene fossil found on Hispaniola. E. stegosoma was the first fossil streblid bat fly described from a fossil, and the only member of the subfamily Nycterophiliinae described from Hispaniola. The species is host for the plasmodiid Vetufebrus ovatus preserved in its salivary glands and midgut.
Plagiorchis vespertillionis, also sometimes listed as Plagiorchis vespertilionis, is a species of trematode that parasitizes bats. It was described as a new species in 1780 based on specimens collected from a brown long-eared bat in Denmark. In 2007, it was documented within a human host for the first time.
References
- ↑ Maa, Tsing C. (1965). "An Interim World List of Batflies: (Diptera: Nycteribiidae and Streblidae)1". Journal of Medical Entomology. 1 (4): 380. doi: 10.1093/jmedent/1.4.377 . PMID 14280491.
- ↑ Maity, Aniruddha; Naskar, Atanu; Mitra, Swati; Chakraborty, Abesh; Hazra, Surajit; Banerjee, Dhriti (May 2014). Indian Louse Flies (Insecta: Diptera: Hippoboscidae) (Report). Kolkata: Diptera Section, Zoological Survey of India.
- 1 2 3 Scott, Hugh (1914). "On some Oriental Nycteribiidæ[Diptera Pupipara]". Journal of Natural History. Ser. 8. 14 (81). pp. 214–217; Pl. 10. Figs. 1–4. doi:10.1080/00222931408693567.
- 1 2 3 4 Theodor, Oskar (1956). "On the genus Tripselia and the group of Basilia bathybothyra (Nycteribiidae, Diptera)". Parasitology. 46 (3–4): 377–380. doi:10.1017/S003118200002655X. PMID 13378884.
- ↑ Scott, Hugh (1917). "Notes on Nycteribiidae, with Descriptions of Two New Genera". Parasitology. 9 (4): 605. doi:10.1017/S0031182000006211.
