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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 three
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. 2007), both are included in the present checklist (two in
the Czech Republic, two in Bohemia, none in Moravia, and
one in
Slovakia). Since the ECV1, the numbers of
species in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have not been changed. 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. 2007), the family Cremifaniidae is treated as a subfamily
of the Chamaemyiidae.
This paper was partly supported by IRP MSM 6046070901 (Ministry
of education, youth and sports).
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