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Medium-sized (5.0-8.0 mm), slender, shining black flies; with
silvery microtomentose patches on head and sides of thorax in
Tanypeza Fallén, 1820. Head rounded-hemispherical, frons narrow,
in male distinctly narower than in female, antenna small, arista
pubescent, interfrontal setulae and vibrissa absent. Legs long and
slender, tibiae without dorsopreapical setae. Wing narrow, hyaline,
unspotted; C with a weak subcostal break; Sc complete;
R1
setulose, R4+5 recurved distally and ending close to M,
cells bm and cup present, the latter closed by a knee-like bent CuA2,
A1 long, ending near wing margin. Gonostyli fused to
epandrium; hypandrium complex but aedeagus simple, rod-shaped;
epiphallus well developed. Terminal segments of female postabdomen
modified into a telescopic ovipositor with cerci dorsally fused; two
simple spermathecae and one distinct ventral receptacle. The larvae
are saprophagous and probably develop in rotting wood or other plant
detritus under natural conditions. Adults can be found on low
vegetation in wet deciduous forests, usually on the banks of rivers
and brooks.
Only one species, Tanypeza longimana Fallén, 1820, is known to
occur in Europe (Roháček
2007) and the whole of the Palaearctic region (Roháček
1998). Although uncommon, it has also been recorded from the
Czech Republic (both Bohemia and Moravia) and Slovakia, and was
listed in the previous version of the checklist. The family is
characterized in detail by Roháček (1998),
and its only Palaearctic species can be identified with all the
available keys to dipterous families. The nomenclature follows that
in the Fauna Europaea (Roháček
2007).
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