Lonchaeidae

Harym, Younes El & Korneyev, Valery, 2023, New additions to the fauna of the superfamily Tephritoidea (Diptera) of Morocco, Zootaxa 5360 (4), pp. 487-514 : 491

Family Lonchaeidae

The larvae of Lonchaeidae (especially of Dasiops and Lonchaea ) live mainly under the bark of trees, especially conifers attacked by bark beetles / weevils, as zoophages or saprophages. Lamprolonchaea , Lonchaea and Silba have been reared from various fruits and have certain economic importance as pests. Some Silba species have been recorded on decaying stems of grasses ( Poaceae ). Some Dasiops species are also known to induce galls on grass stems (e.g. Cynodon ) in Europe ( Morge, 1967) and Afrotropical grassland habitats ( MacGowan & Rotheray 2021). In North Africa, the family is represented by nine species of the two subfamilies Dasiopinae and Lonchaeinae , eight of which have been recorded from Morocco ( El-Hawagry 2017; Ebejer et al. 2019; Kettani et al. 2022).