Orosarcophaga

Orosarcophaga Townsend, 1927:231.

Type species: Orosarcophaga ornata Townsend, 1927, by monotypy.

Oxyvinia Dodge, 1966: 692. Type species: Oxyvinia piliventris Dodge, 1966, by original designation.

The genus Orosarcophaga was initially described by Townsend (1927) based on one male and one female of Orosarcophaga ornata. In the original description, only coloration characters were present, and no holotype was designated (Townsend 1927; Mello-Patiu & Riccardi 2021). Subsequently, Townsend (1938) provided a more complete description of the genus and designated the male specimen as the “ holotype ”, however, this specimen is actually the lectotype. However, the author did not include the description and illustrations of the terminalia (Mello-Patiu & Riccardi 2021).

The genus Oxyvinia was described by Dodge (1966) based on two species: Oxyvinia piliventris and Oxyvinia grata. Dodge (1966) designated O. piliventris as type species based on two males from Venezuela, while O. grata was initially described by Lopes (1953) in Dexosarcophaga, although with some reservations regarding its generic assignment. Dodge (1996) included as generic characters the male sternite 5 cleft nearly to the base, cercus with an external subapical tooth and phallus separated into 2 segments.

Lopes (1969) enumerated five species within Oxyvinia, and with the exception of O. piliventris, the remaining four species had not been originally included under the genus Oxyvinia. Pape (1996) listed 11 species of Oxyvinia and presented the following generic diagnosis (besides larval characters): row of frontal bristles almost parallel, parafacial setae very small and hairlike, anterior postgenal setae black, postalar wall setose, male mid femur with ctenidium of normal spines, male sternite 5 deeply cleft with almost parallel sides, terminalia red, juxta reduced or not developed.

Mello-Patiu & Riccardi (2021) revisited and illustrated the holotype of Orosarcophaga ornata, concluding that Orosarcophaga and Oxyvinia were synonyms. They provided an updated generic diagnosis as well as a list with the 11 recognized Orosarcophaga species. Although Mello-Patiu & Riccardi (2021) did not include coloration in their generic diagnosis, we observed a common pattern in Orosarcophaga species: the intense golden microtomentum on the head and thorax, particularly in the humeral region.

Orosarcophaga ’s distribution is restricted to the Neotropical Region (Fig. 1). The distributional patterns of Orosarcophaga remain unclear, and only Orosarcophaga excisa seems to be associated with savanna environments in the Amazon region (Carvalho-Filho et al. 2022) and other biomes. Although species of Orosarcophaga exhibit a wide distributional range, the under-sampling of these species presents challenges in recognizing their distributional patterns.