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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Diptera |
~Empididae or Platypezidae
Adult insects. Antennae 3 segmented; ‘modified’; aristate, or not aristate (?); the arista if present, apical. Ptilinal suture absent or weakly defined. Eyes asymmetric, nearly or quite connected above the antennae, or rounded, well separated (?). The maxillary palps 1 segmented, or 2 segmented; porrect. Wings without a sub-apical cell. The costa not extending around the entire wing. Wings without a ‘vena spuria’. Feet without a triple pad. The hind tarsi normal.
Larvae and pupae. The larvae hemicephalic. The pupae without a puparium.
Comments. This description hopelessly inadequate.
Classification. Suborder Brachycera; Division Asilomorpha; Superfamily Empidoidea.
British representation. 2 species in Britain. Genera 2; Atelestus.
Illustrations. • Platycnema pulicarius (from Walker). Platycnema pulicarius, with details of antenna (5a), and extremity of tarsus in side view (5b). From Walker (1851, Plate VIII), with 2mm scale added.
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Diptera. Version: 14th April 2022. delta-intkey.com’.
