Ecliminae Hall, 1969

Greathead, D. J. & Evenhuis, N. L., 2001, Annotated keys to the genera of African Bombylioidea (Diptera: Bombyliidae; Mythicomyiidae), African Invertebrates 42 (1820), pp. 105-224 : 165

Ecliminae Hall

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).