Tribe Lipsanini Enderlein, 1935

The picture-winged fly tribe Lipsanini contains more than 180 described species of 27 nominal genera, mainly distributed in the Neotropical region, with a few dozen of species occurring in the Nearctic, Oceania or recently introduced to the Old World (Kameneva & Korneyev 2006 and in prep.; Kameneva et al. 2017).

Species of Lipsanini can usually be distinguished from Pterocallini, another tribe of the Neotropical Ulidiidae, by having bodies with a greenish or bluish metallic sheen partially obscured by sparse white microtrichia, and by having only two spermathecae (both characters not found elsewhere in the family and considered synapomorphies of the tribe), whereas Pterocallini have mostly matt, often densely microtrichose bodies (very rarely with a metallic blue sheen) and three spermathecae. Lipsanini are subendemic and Pterocallini are endemic to the Neotropics and may form together a lineage opposite to the mostly Holarctic Otitinae and strictly Old World Ulidiini. Recent molecular phylogenies (e.g. Han & Ro 2016) better support the division of the Ulidiidae into three lineages, corresponding to the subfamilies Pterocallinae (incl. Lipsanini) (mostly Neotropical), Ulidiinae (only the strictly Palaearctic tribe Ulidiini) and Otitinae (with the tribes Seiopterini, Myennidini, Cephaliini, and Otitini) (Holarctic, with a few genera reaching as far as south as Southern Africa, New Guinea, and Patagonia) (Kameneva & Korneyev in prep.).

Here, we consider Lipsanini as a tribe of the subfamily Pterocallinae.