Ecliminae Hall 1969

Type genus: Eclimus Loew, 1844.

Hall (1969) reviewed the relationships of the genera included by previous authors in the subfamily Cylleniinae. He showed that Eclimus, Thevenetimyia and Marmasoma White, an Australian endemic, do not have a deeply concave occiput and so could not be retained within it. He also excluded them from the Toxophorinae, which they superficially resemble. Greathead (1988 a) reviewed the genera of Ecliminae and compared them with the Toxophorinae, showing that the genera of Ecliminae differ both in wing venation and genitalia from this subfamily, and that certain other genera, including Palintonus, sometimes placed in the Toxophorinae, are members of the Ecliminae. Phylogenetic analysis placed the Ecliminae as terminal members of the Bombyliinae clade, consequently Yeates (1994) reduced the subfamily to a tribe of the Bombyliinae. He further found that the anomalous bombyliine genus Paratoxophora should be placed in the Ecliminae as sister genus to Marmasoma, based on characters of the genitalia. We have chosen to retain the Ecliminae as a subfamily since they have several synapomorphies not found in Bombyliinae (vide Evenhuis & Greathead 1999).