ARCHISARGOIDEA, Rohdendorf, 1962

Grimaldi, David A., 2016, Diverse Orthorrhaphan Flies (Insecta: Diptera: Brachycera) In Amber From The Cretaceous Of Myanmar: Brachycera In Cretaceous Amber, Part Vii David A. Grimaldi, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2016 (408), pp. 1-132 : 59

SUPERFAMILY ARCHISARGOIDEA

This is a Late Mesozoic (Middle Jurassic to mid-Cretaceous) group of four families, 27 genera, and about 70 species, recently reviewed by Grimaldi and Barden (2016). The families include Archisargidae , Eremochaetidae , Kovalevisargidae , and Tethepomyiidae . With the exception of one tethepomyiid in New Jersey amber ( Grimaldi and Cumming, 1999), and one archisargid from Australia ( Oberprieler and Yeates, 2012), all others are from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of Asia and Europe. This is probably the largest monophyletic group of Brachycera that is extinct. Defining features include a spherical head with large eyes, compact thorax; many have a long, cylindrical abdomen; and the venation of some groups is quite distinctive. The outstanding defining feature, however, are the female terminalia, produced into a pointed, aculeate structure. Besides having an unnecessarily complex taxonomic history, the relationships of archisargoids have been very vague since all except Tethepomyiidae and one recently discovered eremochaetid are lithified fossils, most of them just wings (reviewed by Grimaldi and Barden, 2016). Tethepomyiidae , discussed below, are tiny and reduced, and have revealed little on the close relatives of archisargoids. The discovery of Zhenia xiai (Eremochaetidae) in Burmese amber ( Zhang et al., 2016) is exciting, because preservation is so revealing about relationships. Based on Zhenia , archisargoids are not closely related to Stratiomyomorpha as is often stated ( Zhang et al., 2016), but rather to Nemestrinoidea or Muscomorpha. The aculeate cerci of Zhenia were probably used for parasitoidism, but the most remarkable feature of the fly is the enormous pulvilli and empodium (the former misinterpreted as the claws by Zhang et al., 2016; the claws are actually vestigial). These enormous pads probably adapted the fly to seizing hosts.