Diptera

Reiter

Info

The Diptera Section manages and takes curatorial care of the large collection of Diptera, but also other small orders like Siphonaptera, Strepsiptera, Embioptera, Mecoptera, Megaloptera, Raphidioptera and Neuroptera.

Our research focuses on the systematics and taxonomy of true flies (Diptera), both based on molecular techniques (DNA taxonomy) and morphological characters. In addition, the ecology and the feeding modes of immature stages as well as phylogenomics and new methods in phylogenetic studies are fields of interest.

Our section is also involved in the German Barcode of Life, a project dedicated to compile a unique genetic library for the German flora and fauna, and we are active in cybertaxonomy providing high-quality images, raw data and literature information in different servers like Encyclopedia of Life (via LifeDesks) and Scrachtpads.

Staff

Scientist, permanent position

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Head of the Section Diptera, Curator

Tel: +49 228 9122-292

Fax: +49 228 9122-212

E-Mail: x.mengual [at] leibniz-zfmk.de

Technical or laboratory assistant

Lena Schlebusch

Technical Assitant Section Diptera

Tel: +49 228 9122-293

Fax: +49 228 9122-212

E-Mail: l.schlebusch [at] leibniz-lib.de

Scientist, third-party funded

Marcelo de Santis

Postdoc

Tel: +49 228 9122-321

Fax: +49 228 9122-212

E-Mail: M.deSantis [at] leibniz-lib.de

Ph.D. student

Trevor Burt

PhD student

Tel: +49 228 9122-321

Fax: +49 228 9122-212

E-Mail: t.burt [at] zfmk.de

Moritz Fahldieck

PhD Student GBOL III

Tel: +49 228 9122-321

Fax: +49 228 9122-212

E-Mail: m.fahldieck [at] leibniz-zfmk.de

Santiago Jaume Schinkel

PhD Student "GBOL III: Dark Taxa"

Tel: +49 228 9122-321

Fax: +49 228 9122-212

E-Mail: s.jaume [at] leibniz-zfmk.de

Projects

2022

BGE - Biodiversity Genomics Europe

Project lead:

Astrid Böhne

Funding:

European Union

ERGA - The European Referen...

The European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) initiative is a pan-European scientific response to current threats to biodiversity. Reference genomes provide the most complete insight into the genetic basis that forms each species and represent a powerful resource in understanding how biodiversity functions. ERGA aims to sequence the genomes of all European species and will for this establish an interdisciplinary workflow.

Project lead:

Astrid Böhne

Funding:

European Union

2020

CaBOL - Caucasus Barcode of Life

A Georgian-Armenian-German initiative to build research infrastructures and to explore and barcode the biodiversity of the Caucasus

Project lead:

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Misof

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

GBOL III: Dark Taxa

The BMBF-funded GBOL, the German Barcode of Life initiative, has been run successfully over the last eight years. It delivered an operative DNA barcode reference library for German animals, fungi and plants. However, a significant proportion of insect taxa has so far been excluded from GBOL and merely all biodiversity research, because no or only very insufficient expertise and information are available that allow to get a grip on them. They are called “Dark Taxa”.

Project lead:

Dr. Ralph S. Peters

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

2018

Establishing a standardized and universally applicable set of nuclear-encoded markers for genome-wide multi-locus species delimitation of metazoans

Methods for delimiting species based on multi-gene nucleotide information are well established and provide the means to complement the classical COI barcoding approach, whose limitations are well known. Our research project aims at establishing a standardized set of single-copy nuclear-encoded markers for genome-wide multi-locus species delimitation by exploiting comparative genomic data and applying target DNA enrichment. Candidate markers are so-called Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (USCOs).

Project lead:

Dr. Dirk Ahrens

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Plant-pollinator networks in agro-ecosystems

Pollination is crucial for maintaining angiosperm biodiversity and represents one of the most important ecosystem services. With the increasing threats of massive insect decline, studying pollination and associated networks has become more important than ever. In this study, we target the plant-pollinator networks of two important crops (caraway and apple) using a combination of traditional methods with DNA barcoding and metabarcoding.

Project lead:

Prof. Dr. J. Wolfgang Wägele

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

2017

GGBC: Assessment, Monitoring and Management of Caucasian Biodiversity

A Georgian-German initiative to explore and barcode the biodiversity of the Caucasus area

Project lead:

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Misof

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

2016

Syrphids of New Caledonia

The main objective of this project will be the study of the species of the family Syrphidae from New Caledonia. Entomological collections will be surveyed to complete the revision of the fauna of this country. I will especially focus on unidentified material in order to study their morphology and to report new species for this country and, ultimately, to find new species to science.

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Funding:

European Union

2015

INDOBIOSYS Diptera

The INDOBIOSYS project (financed by the BMBF through the Naturkundemuseum Berlin) deals with the integrative inventory of different animal groups at the Halimun-Salak Nationalpark on Java, Indonesia. A special focus lies on a fast inventory combining molecular and morphological data. The aim of the project is an inventory of the biodiversity of the park for the Indonesian state. Successively, pharmaceutical research for relevant substances in the animal taxa can then be conducted.The INDOBIOSYS Myriapoda part of the project will inventorize the millipedes.

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

BIG4 - Diptera

Syrphidae, commonly called hover or flower flies, is one of the most diverse families of Diptera very attractive for citizen-scientists. Phylogenetic relationships among its main subfamilies and genera are still not totally understood; especially large genera such as Allobaccha Curran and Asarkina Macquart. This project aims to review both genera in order to describe the new species using new publishing tools, as well as to study their phylogenetic placement among other Syrphidae with the development of a workflow for Ultra-Conserved Elements or Anchored Hybrid Enrichment technique.

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Funding:

European Union

BIG4

BIG4 is a global consortium to train a new generation of systematic entomologists with broad profiles amalgamating classical aspects of biosystematics with the cross-disciplinary methodological innovations. Evolution of insects from the four biggest orders (1. beetles; 2. bees, ants and wasps; 3. flies and mosquitoes; 4. moths and butterflies) is at the core of BIG4. These ‘big four’ insect groups constitute about half of all living species on Earth and have an enormous impact on natural or anthropogenic ecosystems, even when not visible as such by a layman.

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Funding:

European Union

2014

World Syrphidae Phylogeny

The World Syrphidae Phylogeny (WSP) project is a community effort with the goal to provide the most robust molecular backbone to understand the evolution of the family Syrphidae.

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Syrphidae fauna of the UCLA University Park, Lara State, Venezuela

This project will provide better knowledge of the biodiversity of flower flies that occur in the University Park of the UCLA (Lara, Venezuela). In addition, and the biological cycle of the predacious species of Syrphidae will be studied.

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Syrphidae of the Southern provinces of Eucador

Flower flies are one of the most diverse families of true flies (Diptera). In this project, we will study the biodiversity of flower flies among different habitats in one of the species-richest areas on Earth, the South of Ecuador.

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Funding:

Alexander-Koenig-Society e.V., La Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja

Molecular phylogeny of the genus Anastrepha

The main objective of this study is to infer the molecular phylogeny of one of the most economical important genus of fruit flies, Anastrepha (Tephritidae).

Project lead:

Dr. Ximo Mengual

Funding:

United States Department of Agriculture

2011

GBOL- German Barcode of Life

"German Barcode of Life" ( GBOL ) is a project sponsored by the BMBF and includes the creation of inventories for the gentic characterization of the animals, fungi and plants of germany, using DNA-Barcodes.

Project lead:

Prof. Dr. J. Wolfgang Wägele

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

2009

Mycetophilidae (Diptera) in…

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Publications

Below you will find the publications of the Diptera Section arranged by year of publication.

Published in

2020

Mengual, X., Ssymank, A., Skevington, J. H., Reemer, M., Ståhls, G. (2020): The genus Afrosyrphus Curran (Diptera, Syrphidae), with a description of a new species. - European Journal of Taxonomy 635: 1-17.

[read more]

Documents:

919-4061-1-pb.pdf

Heo, C. C., Rahimi, R., Mengual, X., Isa, M. S. M., Zainal, S., Khofar, P. N., Nazni, W. A. (2020): Eristalinus arvorum (Fabricius, 1787) (Diptera:Syrphidae) in human skull: a new fly species of forensic importance. - Journal of Forensic Sciences 65: 276-282.

[read more]

Documents:

2019_eristalinus_arvorum.pdf

Mengual, X. (2020): First record of Paragus flammeus Goeldlin de Tiefenau, 1971 (Diptera, Syrphidae) from Portugal. - Boletín de la Asociación española de Entomología 44 (1-2): 219-222.

[read more]

Documents:

ento-0_nota-7_44_1-22020.pdf

Mengual, X., de Soto Molinari, C. (2020): First record of the genus Syritta Le Peletier & Audinet-Serville, 1828 (Diptera, Syrphidae) from the West Indies. - Check List 16(4): 991-995.

[read more]

Documents:

2020_syritta_west_indies.pdf

Jaume-Schinkel, S., Soares, M. M. M., Barros, L. M. (2020): Chvalaea yolkamini sp. nov. (Diptera: Hybotidae), the first Mexican species of genus discovered on Instagram. - Zootaxa 4748 (3): 592-600.

[read more]

Stuke, J.-H., Beuk, P. L. T. , Fahldieck, M., Flügel, H.-J., Heiss, R., Kehlmaier, C., Kuhlisch, C., Mengual, X., Pavlova, A., Pont, A. C., Reimann, A., Rulik, B., Ssymank, A., Streese, N., Von Tschirnhaus,M., Werner, D. & Ziegler, J. (2020): Funde von Zweiflüglern (Insecta: Diptera) während des 35. Treffens des Arbeitskreises Diptera in Hitzacker, Niedersachsen (Deutschland). – Studia dipterologica 23(2): 267-297.

[read more]

Documents:

267-297_studia23-2_stuke_et_al.pdf

2019

Van Steenis, J., Van Zuijen, M. P., Van Steenis, W., Makris, C., Van Eck, A., Mengual, X. (2019): Hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) of Cyprus: results from a collecting trip in October 2017. - Bonn zoological Bulletin 68: 125-146.

[read more]

Documents:

2019_cyprus.pdf

Mengual, X., Barkalov, A. V. (2019): Two new species of Rohdendorfia (Diptera: Syrphidae) from Central Asia. - Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae 59(1): 325-336.

[read more]

Documents:

2019_rohdendorfia.pdf

Aracil, A., Pérez-Bañón, C., Mengual, X., Radenković, S., Ståhls, G., Vujić, A., Rojo, S. (2019): New information about the pre-imaginal morphology of genus Graptomyza (Diptera, Syrphidae, Volucellini): description of third-instar larva and re-description of puparium of G. signata (Walker, 1860). - African Invertebrates 60(1), 15-30.

[read more]

Documents:

2019_graptomyza_larva.pdf

Sonet, G., De Smet, Y., Tang, M., Virgilio, M., Young ,A.D., Skevington, J.H., Mengual, X., Backeljau, T., Liu S., Zhou X., De Meyer M., Jordaens K. (2019): First mitochondrial genomes of five hoverfly species of the genus Eristalinus (Diptera: Syrphidae). - Genome 62: 677-687.

[read more]

Documents:

2019_eristalinus_mitogenomes.pdf

López-García, G., Barahona-Segovia, R. M., Maza, N., Domínguez, M.C., Mengual, X. (2019): Filling gaps in flower fly distributions: first record of Aneriophora aureorufa (Philippi, 1865) (Diptera, Syrphidae) from Argentina. - Check List 15 (3): 349-355.

[read more]

Documents:

2019_aneriophora.pdf

Medeiros, H.R., Martello, F., Almeida,E.A.B., Mengual, X., Harper, K.A., Campanholo Grandinete, Y., Metzger, J.P., Abbud Righi, C., Ribeiro, M.C. (2019): Landscape structure shapes the diversity of beneficial insects in coffee producing landscapes. - Biological Conservation 238, 108193.

[read more]

Thormann, Jana, Dirk Ahrens, Cort Anderson, Jonas J. Astrin, Levan Mumladze, Björn Rulik, David Tarkhnishvili, Marianne Espeland, Matthias Geiger, Nils Hein, Giorgi Iankoshvili, Elisabeth Karalashvili, Ximo Mengual, Carsten Morkel, Marco T. Neiber, Ralph S. Peters, André Reimann, Axel Ssymank, Thomas Wesener, Joachim Ziegler & Bernhard Misof (2019): A prelude to the Caucasus Barcode of Life Platform (CaBOL): Biodiversity Days in Georgia in 2018 and 2019. – Bonn zoological Bulletin 68 (2): 275–296.

[read more]

Links:

[Fulltext PDF]

2018

Burt, T.O., and Mengual, X. 2018. New records of Melanostoma fumivenosum Doesburg (Diptera: Syrphidae) with the description of the male. Australian Entomologist 45(2), 209–216.

[read more]

Documents:

2018_melanostoma_fumivenosum.pdf

Norrbom, A.L., Barr, N.B., Kerr, P., Mengual, X., Nolazco, N., Rodriguez, E.J., Steck, G.J., Sutton, B.D., Uramoto, K., Zucchi, R.A. 2018. Synonymy of Toxotrypana Gerstaecker with Anastrepha Schiner (Diptera: Tephritidae). Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington, 120(4), 834-841.

[read more]

Documents:

2018_toxotrypana_synonymy.pdf

Thompson, F.C., Wyatt, N., and Mengual, X. 2018. Eosmallota, a new name for Klossia Curran, a genus of flower flies (Diptera: Syrphidae). The Entomologist's Monthly Magazine 154, 137–141.

[read more]

Documents:

2018_eosmallota.pdf

Mengual, X., Miranda, G.F.G., and Thompson, F.C. 2018. Unraveling Ocyptamus and the Baccha legacy (Diptera: Syrphidae): redefinition of groups and new species descriptions. Zootaxa 4461(1), 001–044.

[read more]

Documents:

2018_ocyptamus.pdf

Ramage, T., Charlat, S., and Mengual, X. 2018. Flower flies (Diptera, Syrphidae) of French Polynesia, with the description of two new species. European Journal of Taxonomy 448, 1–37.

[read more]

Links:

http://www.europeanjournaloftaxonomy.eu/index.php/ejt/article/view/579

Documents:

2018_french_polynesia.pdf

Mengual, X., Ståhls, G., Láska, P., Mazánek, L., and Rojo, S. 2018. Molecular phylogenetics of the predatory lineage of flower flies Eupeodes-Scaeva (Diptera: Syrphidae), with the description of the Neotropical genus Austroscaeva gen. nov. Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research 56, 148–169.

[read more]

Documents:

2018_austroscaeva.pdf

Norrbom, A.L. Barr, N.B., Kerr, P., and Mengual, X. 2018. Case 3772 – Anastrepha Schiner, 1868 (Insecta, Diptera, Tephritidae): Proposed precedence over Toxotrypana Gerstaecker, 1860. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 75, 165–169.

[read more]

Documents:

2018_iczn_synonymy.pdf