| Phaeobalia elapha | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Diptera |
| Superfamily: | Empidoidea |
| Family: | Empididae |
| Subfamily: | Clinocerinae |
| Genus: | Phaeobalia |
| Species: | P. elapha |
| Binomial name | |
| Phaeobalia elapha (Vaillant, 1968) [1] | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Phaeobalia elapha is a species of dance flies, in the fly family Empididae.
Flies are insects with a pair of functional wings for flight and a pair of specialized hindwings called halteres for balance. They are classified as an order called Diptera, that name being derived from the Greek δι- di- "two", and πτερόν pteron "wing". The order Diptera is divided into two suborders, with about 110 families divided between them; the families contain an estimated 1,000,000 species, including the familiar housefly, horse-fly, crane fly, and hoverfly; although only about 125,000 species have a species description published. The earliest fly fossils found so far are from the Triassic, about 240 million years ago; phylogenetic analysis suggests that flies originated in the Permian, about 260 million years ago.
Empididae is a family of flies with over 3,000 described species occurring worldwide in all the Ecozones but the majority are found in the Holarctic. They are mainly predatory flies like most of their relatives in the Empidoidea, and exhibit a wide range of forms but are generally small to medium-sized, non-metallic and rather bristly.
