New empidoid flies (Diptera: Atelestidae; Dolichopodidae) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber

Corentin Jouault , Valérie Ngô-Muller , Qingqing Zhang , André Nel (1)

1 ISYEB - Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité

Examination of mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber reveals a new species of Atelestidae: Alavesia myanmarensis sp. nov., and the female of the dolichopodid Microphorites pouilloni Ngô-Muller & Nel, 2020. Both are described and illustrated. Alavesia myanmarensis sp. nov. is the first species of Alavesia from the mid-Cretaceous amber of northern Myanmar. The oldest records of this genus of small Diptera are from the Early to Late Cretaceous ambers of Spain, while the Burmese amber was probably produced on an island during the mid-Cretaceous, which had separated from Gondwana during the Jurassic. It suggests a possible Late Jurassic origin of the genus Alavesia.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Biodiversity; Systematics, Phylogenetics and taxonomy

Corentin Jouault, Valérie Ngô-Muller, Qingqing Zhang, André Nel. New empidoid flies (Diptera: Atelestidae; Dolichopodidae) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. Palaeoentomology, 2020, 3 (2), pp.204-211. ⟨10.11646/palaeoentomology.3.2.10⟩. ⟨mnhn-03992953⟩