BOMBYLIIDAE, , sensu Yeates, 1994

Grimaldi, David A., 2016, Diverse Orthorrhaphan Flies (Insecta: Diptera: Brachycera) In Amber From The Cretaceous Of Myanmar: Brachycera In Cretaceous Amber, Part Vii David A. Grimaldi, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2016 (408), pp. 1-132 : 63-64

FAMILY BOMBYLIIDAE

This is a large, heterogeneous family of asiloid flies that are ecologically important as larval parasitoids and adult pollinators, especially in Mediterranean biomes. They range from minute, empidoidlike Mythicomyiinae (sometimes placed in their own family), to very large, striking Anthracinae with bold color patterns. Hull (1973) monographed the world genera, comprised of some 4500 species, and summarized the biology, morphology, fossils, and zoogeography. Beeflies are efficient pollinators of diverse herbaceous angiosperms (e.g., Grimaldi, 1988; Herrera, 1988; Pentadinous and Ellis, 1993; Goldblatt and Manning, 2000; Kastinger and Weber, 2001; Larsen et al., 2001; Orford et al., 2015). They feed on nectar as well as pollen, many of them using a long proboscis to probe flowers; others have short proboscides. They are excellent hoverers. Yeates (1994) comprehensively analyzed the morphology and phylogeny of the 15 or so subfamilies, pruning the family of enigmatic genera traditionally placed in it, such as Caenotus and Prorates (now in Scenopinidae ) and Apystomyia (in Apystomyiidae ) ( Yeates, 1992). Bombyliidae is at the base of the Asiloidea , as either sister group to the Hilarimorphidae —and this pair as sister group to all other asiloids ( Yeates, 1994)—or itself as sister group to all other asiloids ( Woodley, 1989; Yeates, 2002; Wiegmann et al., 2011), or even as sister group to all other heterodactylan flies ( Trautwein et al., 2010). The world species are cataloged (Evenhuis and Greathead, 1999, 2003).

The Tertiary fossil record of Bombyliidae is quite diverse, particularly as lithified remains in the larger shale deposits. The fossil record was reviewed by Hull (1973) and Evenhuis (1994); more recent reports include Nel and de Plöeg (2004); Nel (2006); Wedmann and Yeates (2008). There is a substantial diversity of beeflies in Tertiary amber, including Cylleniinae in Baltic amber ( Hennig, 1966), and some 17 species of Mythicomyiinae in Miocene Dominican amber and Eocene ambers from Europe (Baltic, Bitterfeld, Rovno, Oise) (Evenhuis, 2002, 2013). One of the few Cretaceous reports of beeflies is Microburmyia Grimaldi , a putative stem-group mythicomyiine in amber from Burma ( Grimaldi et al., 2011). The four new Bombyliidae described here are, thus, important new records, especially since these are phylogenetically more derived than Microburmyia .