PSYCHE. 



DESCRIPTIONS OF SOME NEW NORTH AMERICAN 

 DOLICHOPODIDAE. 



BY WILLIAM M. WHEELER, MILWAUKEE, WIS. 



Since tlie publication in 1S64 of 

 Loew's admirable Monogi-aph of the 

 North American DoUchopodidae^ very 

 little work has been done on these inter- 

 esting diptera. Baron v. Osten Sacken 

 in his "Western diptera," published in 

 1S77, described, from California nine 

 new species, belonging to the genera 

 Hygroceleuthus^ Dolichopjis^ Tachy- 

 trechus^ Liancalus^ Scellus and Poly- 

 medon. The last is a new and very 

 peculiar genus. Mik, in 1S7S (Ver- 

 hand. d. zoolog. bot. gesell. p. 617- 

 632) described one new North Ameri- 

 can species for which he erected the 

 genus Hypocharassjts. More recently, 

 in 1SS8, Bigot (Bull. soc. ent. France 

 XXIX, XXX) has described eight new 

 species from Hayti, Mexico, North 

 Carolina and California, representing 

 several new genera. 



Barring these contributions, our 

 knowledge of the North American 

 Dolichopodldae has made no advance 

 since Loew's time. This is not to be 

 attributed to inattention on the part of 

 living dipterologists, but rather to the 

 thorouofhness of Loew's work. From 



a taxonomic standpoint little is left to 

 the 'em'Yovoi besides the filling out of 

 the unavoidable gaps in the work of the 

 master entomologist. 



»Like other students of our diptera, 

 who have given some attention to the 

 Dolichopodldae,, I can add very little to 

 Loew's work. With three exceptions 

 the species here described fall naturally 

 into genera defined and adopted by 

 Loew. For these three exceptions I 

 have erected two new genera, Peloro- 

 peodes and Aphantotimus^ based, I be- 

 lieve, on sufficiently distinctive charac- 

 ters. The former, including as yet only 

 one species, P. salax, is allied to Rha- 

 phiufti; the latter, to which I assign two 

 species, A. wlUistoni and A. fi-ater- 

 ciilits^ is allied to Chrysotimus. Pel- 

 oi'opeodcs is interesting as forming a 

 link between those higher forms, which, 

 like DoUchopiis^ have large disengaged 

 hypopygia and the genera like Rha- 

 p/iitiiii, Porphyrops and its allies, w^hich 

 have the third antennal joint elongated, 

 tapering, with apical arista, and the 

 hypopygium small and more or less 

 imbedded. Aphantotimiis appears to 



