Genus Paragrallomyia Hendel

Paragrallomyia Hendel, 1933: 63 (as a subgenus of Grallomya Rondani, 1850: 180); resurrected from synonymy with Taeniaptera Macquart and elevated to genus by Jackson et al. 2015: 14. Type species, Musca annulata Fabricius, 1787: 348 (= Calobata annulata Fabricius 1805: 262), Paragrallomyia annulata (Fabricius), Jackson et al. 2015: 14.

Diagnosis: Body length 4–8 mm. Shiny yellow to dark brown (sometimes ferruginous) or black. Palpus ventrally convex, axe-shaped. Arista bare. Cell cup (anal cell of most micropezid literature) long (CuA 2 as long or longer than A 1 +CuA 2). Wing membrane around the anterior part of dm-cu unpigmented (Fig. 1, except in Paragrallomyia brasiliensis n. sp.). Cell r 4+5 almost always open at the wing margin, closed only in Paragrallomyia vulpes.

Comments: Paragrallomyia is distinguished from other Taeniapterinae with a long cell cup (CuA 2 as long or longer than A 1 +CuA 2) and an axe-shaped palpus by a characteristic patch of unpigmented wing membrane around the anterior part of dm-cu (Fig. 1). The genus is further characterized by a narrowed distal distiphallus and a basal distiphallus that is twice as wide as the distal distiphallus (Figs. 9, 23, 34, 38, 42, 46, 52, 56).

Taeniaptera species also have an axe-shaped palpus but are distinguished from Paragrallomyia by the pigmented wing membrane around dm-cu and by the wide (as wide as basal distiphallus), heavily sclerotized distal distiphallus (Fig. 2). We here propose Taeniaptera as a small group of two named species, T. lasciva (Fabricius) and T. trivittata (Macquart), and at least two undescribed species.

The following species, treated as Paragrallomyia by Jackson et al. (2015), lack the derived characters of the genus Paragrallomyia as redefined here: P. aeripennis (Enderlein), P. aliceae (Albuquerque), P. dilutimacula (Enderlein), P. latifascia (Wulp), P. lauta (Cresson), P. longifurca (Hendel), P. nigritarsis (Macquart), P. rufifacies (Macquart), P. seiuncta (Czerny), P. simillima (Hendel), P. strigata (Enderlein), P. tibialis (Macquart), P. vittipennis (Coquillett). Only one of these species, P. aliceae, was sequenced in Jackson et al. (2015), and this species was out of the Paragrallomyia clade in their analysis. These species fit better in Poecilotylus Hennig than in Paragrallomyia and are transferred there as new combinations with the full realization that Poecilotylus is currently just a repository for Taeniapterini that do not fit into better defined genera. Taeniaptera lineata (Enderlein) is also transferred to Poecilotylus as reference to the type specimen shows a parallel-sided palpus. A list of all species currently placed in Poecilotylus can also be found in Table 1.