Description of the external morphology of the puparia of eight species of bat flies (Diptera: Streblidae)

ABSTRACT

The Dipteran family Streblidae are ectoparasites of bats. These flies are viviparous and have an intrauterine larval life phase, a free-living sessile puparium phase and the adult obligate parasite. Here we describe the external morphology of the puparium of Aspidoptera phyllostomatis (Perty, 1833), Megistopoda aranea (Coquillett, 1899), M. proxima (Séguy, 1826), Noctiliostrebla morena Alcantara et al., 2019, Paradyschiria parvula Falcoz, 1931, Strebla consocia Wenzel, 1966, Trichobius joblingi Wenzel, 1966 and T. longipes (Rudow, 1871) and provide an identification key. We also describe the method we developed for collecting the puparia, which was done between April 2015 and August 2016. The characters that most differentiated the species were spiracles and ornaments.

KEYWORDS:

• Hippoboscoidea
• immature stage
• taxonomy
• ectoparasites
• identification key

Acknowledgments

We thank the owner and workers of Fazenda Dona Amélia by the logistical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

GDPD and GG acknowledge the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – CAPES [process #1567829/2015-2] and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPq [process #405126/2016-6] by the financial assistance, respectively.