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Flower flies (Diptera: Syrphidae) are one of the most species‐rich dipteran families and provide important ecosystem services such as pollination, biological control of pests, recycling of organic matter and redistributions of essential nutrients. Flower fly adults generally feed on pollen and nectar, but their larval feeding habits are strikingly diverse. In the present study, high‐throughput sequencing was used to capture and enrich phylogenetically and evolutionary informative exonic regions. With the help of the baitfisher software, we developed a new bait kit (SYRPHIDAE1.0) to target 1945 CDS regions belonging to 1312 orthologous genes. This new bait kit was successfully used to exon capture the targeted loci in 121 flower fly species across the different subfamilies of Syrphidae. We analysed different amino acid and nucleotide data sets (1302 loci and 154 loci) with maximum likelihood and multispecies coalescent models. Our analyses yielded highly supported similar topologies, although the degree of the SRH (global stationarity, reversibility and homogeneity) conditions varied greatly between amino acid and nucleotide data sets. The sisterhood of subfamilies Pipizinae and Syrphinae is supported in all our analyses, confirming a common origin of taxa feeding on soft‐bodied arthropods. Based on our results, we define Syrphini stat.rev. to include the genera Toxomerus and Paragus. Our divergence estimate analyses with beast inferred the origin of the Syrphidae in the Lower Cretaceous (125.5–98.5 Ma) and the diversification of predatory flower flies around the K–Pg boundary (70.61–54.4 Ma), coinciding with the rise and diversification of their prey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Records for the hoverflies (Diptera, Syrphidae) of La Palma (Canary Islands) are here reviewed and updated. In October and November of 2017, syrphid flies were collected on La Palma and the collection records from this excursion with new information on seasonal activity and new records for the Island are given, together with all the literature records published for La Palma. The species Eumerus obliquus (Fabricius) is reported for the first time from La Palma, totaling 25 species of hoverflies documented from this Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This BIG4 PhD project involves the overall taxonomic revision of the genera Allobaccha Curran and Asarkina Macquart (Diptera: Syrphidae). The revisions will be divided by biogeographic region (Afrotropical and Indomalayan) and published accordingly. The publications will be collated as a thesis for submission to the University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany) doctoral program of biology. The goal of this project is to resolve alpha taxonomy and to infer the phylogenetic placement of these genera within the Syrphidae using Next-Generation Sequencing and Anchored Hybrid Enrichment techniques. The techniques undertaken in this project will be applied to future systematic problems in Diptera and testing future phylogenetic hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearctic Stylogaster Macquart (Diptera: Conopidae) species concepts are revised. We provide redescriptions of S. biannulata (Say) and S. neglecta Williston, description of S. beresfordinew species, an illustrated key to species, range maps, and ecological data. Stylogaster beresfordi ranges from southern Mexico to southern New Mexico, United States of America. DNA barcode data are provided with neighbour-joining and Bayesian analyses and relationships of the three species are discussed. We hypothesise that S. neglecta and S. beresfordi are sister taxa, while S. biannulata is in a different clade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]