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Adults of the European species are
small (2.0-3.0 mm), glossy black flies; arista with long rays on
upper side and much shorter ones on lower side, thus closely
resembling some species of Ephydridae Zetterstedt, 1837 and
Drosophilidae Rondani, 1856. Unlike the European Drosophilidae and
Ephydridae, costa with a row of stronger spines and inner side of
fore femur with a strong thorn (like the Diastatidae Hendel, 1917,
which are however more slender and never glossy black). The immature
stages have been described only for an aberrant African genus (Kirk-Spriggs
& Barraclough 1998). Adults occur from lowlands to highlands in
non-forested areas; they are rarely collected by sweeping (except
for C. atrimana, which can be regularly swept in steppe
biotopes), because they usually occur near the entrances to the
burrows of rabbits and small rodents (Baumann
1977). They have also been reared from decayed pigeon guano (Smith
1989). Some extra-European species are associated with the
shelters of rock hyraxes (Procavia capensis) and with the
colonies of troglophilic bats (Barraclough
1998).
There are about
twenty described species and a considerable number of undescribed
species in this small family, distributed mostly in the Afrotropical
region (Barraclough
1998); eight species in the single genus Camilla Haliday,
1838 occur in Europe (Carles-Tolrá
2007). Four species of this family are currently known from the
Czech Republic (Máca
1997), only two species are known from Slovakia. Useful
information concerning the European and other species has been given
by (Papp
1985,
1998).
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