Oscinellinae Becker, 1910

Ismay, Barbara & Ang, Yuchen, 2019, First records of Pseudogaurax Malloch 1915 (Diptera: Chloropidae) from Singapore, with the description of two new species discovered with NGS barcodes, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 67, pp. 412-420 : 413

Oscinellinae Becker, 1910 Pseudogaurax Malloch, 1915

Generic diagnosis. Most Pseudogaurax species have a combination of characters that fit a typical form, as given by Ismay (1987: 593), based on Kanmyia (1983): “Head compressed from front to rear; eye pubescent, long axis usually vertical; frontal [=ocellar] triangle large and shining; 3rd antennal segment deeper than long or produced anterodistally, arista thickened in some species; vibrissal angle not acute; postvertical seta large, upright, crossed, outer vertical seta as large, upright, crossed, inner vertical small; anepisternum bare, scutellum elongate, usually triangular, flat on disc, apical setae long and approximated; legs with tibial organ, but no tibial spur or femoral comb; wing unmarked”. However, some species can vary considerably, which can make them difficult to delimit from Gaurax ( Cogan, 1977) . As a result, some authors have reduced this definition depending on the species they are dealing with (e.g., Sabrosky, 1966; Cogan, 1977). A proper definition of Pseudogaurax would require a revision of both Gaurax and Pseudogaurax , which is beyond the scope of this paper. More on this topic will be mentioned in the discussion section. As such, we base our decision to describe both species as Pseudogaurax on the concept used in Ismay (1987) and Cherian (2013), but not as it was defined in Ismay (1987), as he widened his own concept within the same paper.

In attempting to identify the genus, both specimens keyed to Gaurax in Becker (1911) ; Pseudogaurax was later split off from this genus ( Malloch, 1915). Both specimens could not be keyed out to existing species on Oriental or Australasian Pseudogaurax ( Ismay, 1987; Cherian, 2013), and were hence identified to be new species and described in this paper.