Biodiversity Literature Repository
Published February 20, 2015 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Fauna Europaea: Diptera – Brachycera

Creators

  • 1. Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 2. Natural History Museum Maastricht / Diptera.info, Maastricht, Netherlands
  • 3. Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, United Kingdom
  • 4. Zoological Museum, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
  • 5. Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Wrocław, Poland
  • 6. Muséum d'histoire naturelle Genève, Paris, Switzerland
  • 7. Forest Research Institute, Department of Forest Protection, Warszawa, Poland
  • 8. Recording Scheme, London, United Kingdom
  • 9. Unaffiliated, Uppsala, Sweden
  • 10. Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden, Museum of Zoology, Dresden, Germany
  • 11. Unaffiliated, Cardiff, United Kingdom
  • 12. CABI, Sussex, United Kingdom
  • 13. I.I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, Kiev, Ukraine
  • 14. Zoological Institute Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russia
  • 15. Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 16. Unaffiliated, Braunschweig, Germany
  • 17. Zoological Museum, Zürich, Switzerland
  • 18. Museum Wiesbaden, Natural History Collections, Wiesbaden, Germany
  • 19. Unaffiliated, Reet (Rumst), Belgium
  • 20. Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Germany
  • 21. NBC Naturalis, Leiden, Netherlands
  • 22. Unaffiliated, Waalwijk, Netherlands|Unaffiliated, Waalwijk, Netherlands
  • 23. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
  • 24. Silesian Museum, Opava, Czech Republic|Silesian Museum, Opava, Czech Republic
  • 25. Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany
  • 26. University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
  • 27. Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
  • 28. Natural History Museum of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 29. University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
  • 30. Zoological Museum, Oslo, Norway
  • 31. c/o Natural History Museum, Venice, Italy
  • 32. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium
  • 33. Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Brussels, Belgium
  • 34. National Parks & Wildlife Service, Dublin, Ireland|Dept. of Zoology, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
  • 35. Unaffiliated, Cowbridge, United Kingdom
  • 36. INRA, UMR Centre de Biologie pour la Gestion des Populations, Montferrier-sur-Lez, France
  • 37. Unaffiliated, Barcelona, Spain
  • 38. MTA-DE 'Lendület' Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Department of Evolutionary Zoology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary|MTA-DE 'Lendület' Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Department of Evolutionary Zoology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary
  • 39. Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
  • 40. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, United States of America
  • 41. Unaffiliated, Melksham, United Kingdom
  • 42. University of Rome, Roma, Italy
  • 43. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
  • 44. California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, California, United States of America
  • 45. Department of Biosystematics, Opole University, Opole, Poland
  • 46. Unaffiliated, Soest, Netherlands
  • 47. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, United States of America
  • 48. National Museum of Natural History, Sofia, Bulgaria
  • 49. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

Description

Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all extant multicellular European terrestrial and freshwater animals and their geographical distribution at the level of countries and major islands (east of the Urals and excluding the Caucasus region). The Fauna Europaea project comprises about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. Fauna Europaea represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing taxonomic specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many user communities in science, government, industry, nature conservation and education. The Diptera–Brachycera is one of the 58 Fauna Europaea major taxonomic groups, and data have been compiled by a network of 55 specialists.

Within the two-winged insects (Diptera), the Brachycera constitute a monophyletic group, which is generally given rank of suborder. The Brachycera may be classified into the probably paraphyletic 'lower brachyceran grade' and the monophyletic Eremoneura. The latter contains the Empidoidea, the Apystomyioidea with a single Nearctic species, and the Cyclorrhapha, which in turn is divided into the paraphyletic 'aschizan grade' and the monophyletic Schizophora. The latter is traditionally divided into the paraphyletic 'acalyptrate grade' and the monophyletic Calyptratae. Our knowledge of the European fauna of Diptera–Brachycera varies tremendously among families, from the reasonably well known hoverflies (Syrphidae) to the extremely poorly known scuttle flies (Phoridae). There has been a steady growth in our knowledge of European Diptera for the last two centuries, with no apparent slow down, but there is a shift towards a larger fraction of the new species being found among the families of the nematoceran grade (lower Diptera), which due to a larger number of small-sized species may be considered as taxonomically more challenging.

Most of Europe is highly industrialised and has a high human population density, and the more fertile habitats are extensively cultivated. This has undoubtedly increased the extinction risk for numerous species of brachyceran flies, yet with the recent re-discovery of Thyreophora cynophila (Panzer), there are no known cases of extinction at a European level. However, few national Red Lists have extensive information on Diptera.

For the Diptera–Brachycera, data from 96 families containing 11,751 species are included in this paper.

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