Hydrotaea Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830

Couri, Marcia S., Pont, Adrian C. & Daugeron, Christophe, 2010, The Muscidae (Diptera) of New Caledonia 2503, Zootaxa 2503 (1), pp. 1-61 : 24

Genus Hydrotaea Robineau-Desvoidy

Hydrotaea Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830: 509 . Type-species: Musca meteorica Linnaeus, 1758 , des. Curtis (1839: plate 768).

Diagnosis. Male holoptic; eye bare; general colour black metallic or brown-dusted non-metallic; arista very short pubescent; gena, in most species, with a strong upcurved seta; female with a pair of cruciate setae on frontal vitta, and with lower orbital seta proclinate; dorsocentrals 2+4; notopleuron with or without ground setulae; anepimeron bare; katepisternals 1:1 (or 0: 1 in some specimens of H. spinigera ); some males with fore femur on ventral surface with a preapical excavation with 2 toothed processes and fore tibia flattened along basal half or two-thirds of ventral surface; M straight; distiphallus with apical part of juxta spinulose; ovipositor long, with narrow tergites.

Comments. Three species are known to occur in New Caledonia: H. australis Malloch , H. chalcogaster (Wiedemann) and H. spinigera (Stein) , the latter first recorded by Shinonaga et al. (1991). Pont (1973a) revised the Australian species and all three species were treated in that paper.