Nycteribiidae Samouelle (ex Leach) 1819

Jindřich Roháček

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

Minute to medium-sized (1.5-5.0 mm), yellowish to brown, spider-like flies without wings but with halteres. Head small, narrow, folded backwards on to thorax in the resting position; eyes and ocelli strongly reduced or absent. Thorax dorsoventrally flattened, with ventral part sclerotized and largely membraneous dorsally; pleura displaced dorsally, including insertion of legs. Legs long and robust, with thickened femora and tibiae; basitarsus as long as or longer than rest of tarsus. Thorax and abdomen usually with ctenidia of setae or spines. The adults are blood-sucking obligatory parasites of bats (Chiroptera). The larvae develop inside the abdomen of the female fly, feeding on secretions from milk glands that open into the vagina. Prior to larviposition, the female leaves its host bat and glues the mature larva (prepupa) to a solid substrate near the resting place of the bat. The deposited larva rapidly forms a puparium. Nycteribiid species show varying degrees of host specificity, from very close species-to-species associations to the absence of host preference.

Altogether 15 species (plus 2 subspecies) of four genera are known in Europe and the adjacent island areas (Hůrka 2004); 11 are listed in the present checklist (8 in the Czech Republic, 6 in Bohemia, 8 in Moravia, and 9 in Slovakia). Since the last version of the checklist, the number of species in the Czech Republic and Slovakia has not been changed. The family is relatively well-studied in the Czech Republic and Slovakia thanks to the monographs by Hůrka (1964, 1980), supplemented by his subsequent studies (Hůrka 1984, 1997). The family was treated in detail by Hůrka (1998), who also included a key to Palaearctic genera and subgenera. The Central European species can be identified by means of Hůrka (1980). The nomenclature used in the present checklist follows that of the Fauna Europaea (Hůrka 2004).

References

[1] Hůrka K. 1964: Distribution, bionomy and ecology of the European bat flies with special regard to the Czechoslovak fauna (Dip., Nycteribiidae). Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Biologica 1964: 167-234.

[2] Hůrka K. 1980: Nycteribiidae – muchulovití. In Chvála M. (ed.): Krevsající mouchy a střečci. Bloodsucking and warble flies. Fauna ČSSR. Vol. 22, Academia, Praha, p. 479-509.

[3] Hůrka K. 1984: New taxa and records of Palaearctic Nycteribiidae and Streblidae (Diptera: Pupipara). Věstník Československé zoologické společnosti 48: 90-101.

[4] Hůrka K. 1997: New data on taxonomy and distribution of Palaearctic, Oriental and Neotropical Ischnopsyllidae (Siphonaptera),  Nycteribiidae and Streblidae (Diptera). Acta Societatis Zoologicae Bohemicae 61: 23-33.

[5] Hůrka K. 1998: 3.55. Family Nycteribiidae. In Papp L. & Darvas B. (eds): Contributions to a Manual of Palaearctic Diptera. Vol. 3., Higher Brachycera. Science Herald, Budapest, pp. 829-838.

[6] Hůrka K. 2004: Fauna Europaea: Nycteribiidae. In Pape T. (ed.): Fauna Europaea: Diptera, Brachycera. Fauna Europaea version 1.1, http://www.faunaeur.org.