Cremifaniidae McAlpine, 1963

Jindřich Roháček¹ & Miroslav Barták²

¹Department of Entomology, Silesian Museum, Tyršova 1, CZ-746 01 Opava, Czech Republic; rohacek@szmo.cz

²Department of Zoology and Fishery, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources,

Czech University of Agriculture, CZ-165 21 Praha 6-Suchdol, Czech Republic; bartak@af.czu.cz

Minute to small (1.5-2.6 mm) grey to greyish-brown acalyptrate flies with unusually patterned wings, with a darkened basal part and strikingly dark brown stigmatal area (subcostal cell between Sc and R1). Arista pubescent, sometimes flattened, postverticals divergent or lost, vibrissa absent. C continuous, without breaks; Sc complete; cross-vein bm-Cu present; cell cup closed. Tibiae without dorsal preapical setae. Gonostylus disparate and bilobed; aedeagus flexible and armed with spines; phallapodeme free. Female with 3 separate spermathecae. The larvae of Cremifania nigrocellulata Czerny, 1904 are parasitoids (or predators) of balsam woolly aphids (Adelgidae) on pines and other conifers; the species was introduced into the Nearctic region to control adelgid aphids. The remaining two species of Cremifania Czerny, 1904 are also thought to have a similar biology.

Only three species of one genus are known worldwide (Papp 1994, 1998) and two of them occur in Europe (Gaimari et al. 2004), both are included in the present checklist (2 in the Czech Republic, 2 in Bohemia, none in Moravia, and 1 in Slovakia). Since the last version of checklist, the number of species in the Czech Republic has increased by 2 (both in Bohemia); none has been added to the fauna of Slovakia. The family is inadequately known in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia because Cremifania species are seldom collected by regular methods. The family is characterized in detail by Papp (1998); all known species can be identified by means of keys in Papp (1994, 1998). There is no comprehensive treatment of the Czech and Slovak species. The sparse faunistic data from Slovakia were provided by Pschorn-Walcher and Zwölfer (1960) and by Roháček and Barták (2006); those from the Czech Republic have recently been added by Roháček and Barták (2001, 2006). In the Fauna Europaea (Gaimari et al. 2004), the family Cremifaniidae is treated as a subfamily of the Chamaemyiidae.

References

[1] Gaimari S.D., Bystrowski C., Richter V.A. & Tanasijtshuk V.N. 2004: Fauna Europaea: Chamaemyiidae. In Pape T. (ed.): Fauna Europaea: Diptera, Brachycera. Fauna Europaea version 1.1, http://www.faunaeur.org.

[2] Papp L. 1994: A new Cremifania species from Hungary (Diptera, Chamaemyiidae). Annales historico-naturales Musei nationalis hungarici 86: 105-107.

[3] Papp L. 1998: 3.39. Family Cremifaniidae. In Papp L. & Darvas B. (eds): Contributions to a Manual of Palaearctic Diptera. Vol. 3., Higher Brachycera. Science Herald, Budapest, pp. 409-414.

[4] Pschorn-Walcher H. & Zwölfer H. 1960: Further observations on European Dreyfusia (Adelges) populations. Zeitschrift für angewandte Entomologie 46: 260-273.

[5] Roháček J. & Barták M. 2001: Cremifaniidae. In Barták M. & Vaňhara J. (eds):  Diptera in an industrially affected region (north-western Bohemia, Bílina and Duchcov environs), II. Folia Facultatis Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis Masarykianae Brunensis, Biologia 105: 313-314.

[6] Roháček J. & Barták M. 2006: Faunistic records. Cremifaniidae. In Kinkorová J. (ed.): Dipterologica bohemoslovaca Vol. 13. Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Biologica 50: 156-157.