Asilidae Leach in Samouelle, 1819

Jaroslav Bosák

Ecological Consulting, a. s., Na Střelnici 48, CZ-779 00 Olomouc, Czech Republic; jaroslav.bosak@ecological.cz

Robber flies are small to very large (3.0-50.0 mm) flies, often with conspicuous dense hairs or almost bare. Eyes large, dichoptic in both sexes, separated by a markedly deepened vertex. Ocellar tubercle pilose, often with bristles. Often with one or more rows of strong bristle-like occipital setae near posterior eye-margin. Face well developed, often prominent and convex with a characteristic facial beard. Thorax well developed. Wings rather narrow for a powerful flyer. All species are very good fliers with long legs which are used for catching prey. Adults can be observed in various biotopes, from lowlands to the upper forest boundary. The basic characteristics of the family were given by e.g. Majer (1997).

With the exception of the polar areas, the family is distributed in all zoogeographic regions with a total of 6500 described species. Within the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the Asilidae are represented by 106 species (Czech Republic 85 species, Bohemia 65 species, Moravia 81 species and Slovakia 101 species), out of a total of 524 European species (Geller-Grimm 2004). Compared with the last version of the checklist of 1997 (Bosák 1997), the number of species has increased by 3 in the Czech Republic (3 in Moravia) (Bosák 1997, 1999, 2001, 2005). There have been some taxonomic changes since the last checklist, which are noted under the relevant species (Lehr 1996). The species richness of the robber-fly fauna is well known in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

References

[1] Bosák J. 1997: Asilidae. In Chvála M. (ed.): Check List of Diptera (Insecta) of the Czech and Slovak Republics. Karolinum – Charles University press, pp. 46-48.

[2] Bosák J. 1999: Faunistic records – Asilidae. In Jedlička L. (ed.): Dipterologica Bohemoslovaca 9, Slovak Entomological Society, Bratislava, p. 194.

[3] Bosák J. 2001: Faunistic records – Asilidae. In Chvála M. (ed.): Dipterologica Bohemoslovaca 10. Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Biologica 45: 188.

[4] Bosák J. 2005: New record – Asilidae. Zprávy Vlastivědného muzea v Olomouci 283: 91.

[5] Geller-Grimm F. 2004: Fauna Europaea: Asilidae. In Pape T. (ed.): Fauna Europaea: Diptera, Brachycera. Fauna Europaea version 1. 1, http://www. faunaeur.org.

[6] Lehr P.A. 1996: Robber flies of subfamily Asilinae (Diptera, Asilidae) of Palaearctic. Ecological and morfological analysis, taxonomy and evolution. Dalnauka, Vladivostok, 181 pp.

[7] Majer J.M. 1997:  European Asilidae. In Papp L. &  Darvas B. (eds): Contributions to a Manual of Palaearctic Diptera (with special reference to flies of economic importance). Vol. 2. Nematocera and Lower Brachycera. Science Herald, Budapest, pp. 549-556.