Spheginobaccha

There are 18 myrmecophilous species in this genus. The genus is readily separated from other microdons by the incomplete metathoracic bridge, round/oval basoflagellomere, occiput with a dorsolateral crease, and other characters

The genus Spheginobaccha is a rare group of flower flies restricted to the Afrotropical and Oriental faunal regions. Nothing is known of their biology. The genus was revised by Thompson (1974) and since then, only one paper has been published on the Afrotropical species (Dirickx 1995), in which two new species were described. Hull (1949) was the first to include the genus in the Microdontinae. Thompson (1969: 77) excluded the genus from the Microdontinae and later placed the genus in an intermediate position in the Milesinae (now Eristalinae) (Thompson 1972). Thompson (1974: 258) placed the genus in its own tribe and as a basal clade in the subfamily Eristalinae. However, recent DNA sequence data placed the group within the subfamily Microdontinae (Ståhls et al. 2003) and as sister to all other microdontines.

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List of Spheginobaccha and their Host Ants

Genus and species	Author and Year	Ant Host	Distribution
Spheginobaccha aethusa	(Walker, 1849)	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha chillcotti	Thompson, 1974	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha demeijerei	van Doesburg, 1968	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha dexioides	Hull, 1944	ants	South Africa
Spheginobaccha dubia	Thompson, 1974	ants	South Africa
Spheginobaccha duplex	(Walker, 1857)	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha guttula	Dirickx, 1995	ants	Madagascar
Spheginobaccha humeralis	(Sack, 1926)	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha knutsoni	Thompson, 1974	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha lieftincki	Doesburg, 1968	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha macropoda	(Bigot, 1883)	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha melancholia	Hull, 1937	ants	Asia
Spheginobaccha pamela	Thompson & Hauser, 2015	ants	South Africa
Spheginobaccha perialla	Thompson, 1974	ants	Malawi
Spheginobaccha rotundiceps	(Loew, 1857)	ants	South Africa
Spheginobaccha ruginosa	Dirickx, 1995	ants	Madagascar
Spheginobaccha stuckenbergi	Thompson & Hauser, 2015	ants	Madagascar, South Africa
Spheginobaccha vandoesburgi	Thompson, 1974	ants	Asia

REFERENCES

• Dirickx, H.G. 1995. Le genre Spheginobaccha de Meijere a Madagascar (Diptera: Syrphidae). Annales de la Société Entomologique de France (N.S.) 31: 151-156.

• Doesburg, & van, P. H. (1968). A contribution to the knowledge of the genus Spheginobaccha de Meijere (Diptera, Syrphidae). Zool. Meded.

• Hull, F. M. (1937). Some Neotropical and Oriental Syrphid flies in the United States National Museum. J. Wash. Acad. Sci.

• Loew, H. 1858. Bidrag till kannedomen om Afrikas Diptera [part]. Öfversigt af Kongliga Vetenskapsakademiens Förhandlingar 14[1857]: 337-383.

• Reemer, Menno & Bot, Sander, 2015, Six new species of Microdon Meigen from Madagascar (Diptera: Syrphidae), Zootaxa 4034 (1), pp. 127-147

• Reemer, M. & G. Stahls 2013. Phylogenetic relationships of Microdontinae (Diptera: Syrphidae) based on molecular and morphological characters. Systematic Entomology 38 (4): 661-688.

• Reemer, M, Stahs, G. 2013. Generic revision and species classification of the Microdontinae (Diptera, Syrphidae). ZooKeys 288:1-213.

• Sack, P. (1926). Syrphiden (Dipteren) von den Philippinen und Malaya. Philippine J. Sci.

• Thompson, 1974. The genus Spheginobaccha de Meijere (Diptera: Syrphidae). Transactions of the American Entomological Society 100 (3): 255–287.

• Thompson, F. C. & Martin Hauser. 2015. In honor of Brian Stuckenberg: Two new Spheginobaccha species of flower flies (Diptera: Syrphidae) from the Afrotropics. African invertebrates 56(3): 769–777.

• Walker, F. 1849. List of the specimens of dipterous insects in the collection of the British Museum. Part III. British Museum (Natural History), London. Pp. [iii]+485-687.