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Minute to small (1.0-2.0 mm), slender, delicate
flies with yellow to grey body. Head with somewhat reduced frontal
chaetotaxy (ocellars absent, two fronto-orbitals with anterior
inclinate, one external vertical, postverticals small and divergent or
absent) and gena with a series of ventroclinate setae terminated by
one porrect pseudovibrissa. Antenna geniculate, arista long-pectinate,
drosophilid-like. Thorax narrower than head, with short humeral and
1-2 postsutural dorsocentrals. Tibiae lacking dorsopreapical setae.
Wing narrow, hyaline or with tinged spots, with one (subcostal) break,
Sc incomplete, cross-veins bm-cu and sometimes also dm-cu absent,
cell cup open. Male genitalia with discrete, strongly inclinate
gonostylus, peculiar and setose (medially not fused) medandrium (=
bacilliform sclerite), asymmetrical aedeagal complex, relatively
small phallapodeme and rather large ejacapodeme. Biology
unsufficiently known. The larvae probably develop in the
water-holding leaf bases of plants, particularly monocotyledons. The
adults of some species are closely associated with tussocks of large
Carex species, others also with
Typha, Scirpus or Cyperus;
Stenomicra soniae Merz & Roháček 2005 may even
be associated with dicotyledonous umbellifers (see
Merz & Roháček 2005).
According to Papp (2006)
the family comprises four
genera worldwide; two genera and three species are
represented in Europe (Merz
& Roháček 2005). All three European species are listed from the
Czech republic (three in Bohemia and three in Moravia) but only
one species
from Slovakia in the present checklist.
Since the ECV1, the number
of species in the Czech Republic has increased by
one (by two in Bohemia
and by one in Moravia), while it remains unchanged in Slovakia.
The family was erected for Stenomicra species by Papp (1984),
but previously and often subsequently this group has been treated as
a member of the Aulacigastridae or the Periscelididae, most recently
as a subfamily of the latter by e.g. Mathis and Papp (1998),
Freidberg and Mathis (2002)
or Merz and Roháček (2005).
The West Palaearctic species of Stenomicridae
were treated in detail and keyed by Merz and Roháček (2005),
who also included a summary of all the faunistic data from the Czech
Republic and Slovakia except for those added by Roháček (2006,
2009).
The nomenclature used here follows that of Merz and Roháček (2005)
and Papp (2006)
who elevated the former subgenera of Stenomicra to generic rank.
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