Australasian/Oceanian Diptera Catalog -- Web Version

Members of this and the Nycteribiidae are often known collectively as bat flies. They are pupiparous and parasitic exclusively on bats. Streblids are more diverse in structure and biology and can, in several respects, be readily distinguished from nycteribiids. The body shape is usually normal, rarely bilaterally compressed and flealike, never strongly flattened and spiderlike. The head and legs arise from the sides of the thorax, never from the dorsal thoracic surface. The wings are almost always fully developed, rarely reduced and nonfunctional. The puparia are ovoid and are usually found on the ground beneath the roosts of bat hosts. Sexual dimorphism is exceedingly significant in the subfamily Ascodipterinae: the male has degenerated mouthparts and probably takes no food during its short life; the female has strongly modified mouthparts and, on finding a suitable site on the host bat (such as ear base, forehead, upper arm), sheds its wings and legs, burrows into and encysts itself in the tissues of the bat, and becomes endoparasitic. By that time the entire dealate and legless female is maggotlike, with head and thorax invaginated inside the distorted abdomen, leaving only 3 pairs of the hindmost spiracles and genital aperture exposed to the outside. Apparently females ingest mainly serous fluid.

Streblids are found throughout the tropics and subtropics. The limits of their overall geographic range roughly correspond with the winter isotherm of 10 oC, the temperature at which bats begin to
hibernate. From the New World about 150 species in 26 genera and 3 subfamilies have been reported; all New World genera and subfamilies are endemic, and most species are parasitic on bats of the family Phyllostomatidae. About 70 species in 6 genera and 2 subfamilies are known from the Old World. Among them only 1 genus is endemic to the Afrotropical Region and another to the Oriental Region.
Ref.: Jobling (1951, partial rev.).

BRACHYTARSINA Macquart, 1851: 280(307). Type species: Brachytarsina flavipennis Macquart, 1851, mon.
NYCTERIBOSCA Speiser, 1899b: 46. Type species: Raymondia kollari Frauenfeld, 1855 [= Brachytarsina flavipennis Macquart, 1851], des. Séguy, 1936: 122.
adversa Maa & Marshall, 1981: 220. Vanuatu.
amboinensis Rondani, 1878: 166. Indonesia (Maluku); Australia (NSW, Qld, WA), New Caledonia (Loyalty Is, New Caledonia), Vanuatu; widesp. Oriental Reg.