Scathophagidae Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830

Body-length 5.0-15.0 mm, ground-colour dark, black or yellow, frequently shining, entirely or partially grey dusted, strongly bristled and often yellow haired. The present status of the family is well-founded and unambiguous, with the following principal characters: lower calypter (squama alaris) greatly reduced and linear, head more or less spherical and eyes in both sexes widely separated, frontal vitta in both sexes wide and without a pair of crossed frontal bristles, second antennomere with distinct and complete dorsal longitudinal seam, venation of wing almost constant and without a strong costal spine at end of subcostal vein, katepisternum with one to three bristles, two pairs of gonapophyses. Bernasconi et al. (2000) addressed the problems of phylogeny by carrying out analyses based on COI and Cytb sequences, and they confirmed the monophyly of the Scathophagidae within the limits of the muscoid families.

The adults occur in sheltered and moist habitats of various types, forests, lowland to montane meadows, littoral vegetation, marshes, peat-bogs, etc. Adults are predaceous and hunt small insects, exceptionally consuming nectar in flowers, whilst others are coprophagous and perhaps saprophagous; several arctic species have often been observed on carrion. The eggs are attached to the surface of leaves or are inserted into plant tissues or other substrates. The larvae are phytophagous and mine in the leaves and stems particularly of monocotyledonous plants and, much more rarely, of dicotyledonous plants; other larvae are predaceous and saprophagous, living in soil or stagnant and running water; the larvae of some species occur in excrement, feeding mostly as predators. The larval development is only known for a limited number of species. Kutty et al. (2007) demonstrate that phytophagy in the form of leaf mining is the ancestral larval feeding habit for Scathophagidae and from phytophagy, two shifts to saprophagy and one shift to predation has occurred which a second origin of predation is from a saprophagous ancestor.

Altogether 157 species or subspecies are known to occur in Europe (Šifner 2008a, 2009a, b); the validity of further species needs to be revised in the future. In the present checklist, 77 species are listed from the Czech Republic (75 in Bohemia and 60 in Moravia) and 60 from Slovakia. The number of species known from individual European countries varies greatly and is dependent upon the level of faunistic and taxonomic research.

All the species from the Czech Republic and Slovakia can be reliably distinguishable by the structure of the male and female terminalia, and can be identified using the keys and figures by Šifner (2003a). Šifner (2003a) has compiled and summarised all the basic faunistic data. From the systematic point of view, two subfamilies, Scathophaginae and Delininae (Collin 1958), and eight tribes (Šifner 2003a) are recognised.