A checklist of the 'lower Brachycera' of Finland is presented. This part of the complete checklist of Finnish Diptera covers the families Acroceridae, Asilidae, Athericidae, Bombyliidae, Mythicomyiidae, Rhagionidae, Scenopinidae, Stratiomyidae, Tabanidae, Therevidae, Xylomyidae and Xylophagidae.

Australian beach sand is a productive habitat for lower brachyceran fly larvae but often overlooked by collectors. We collected two species of tabanid larvae from coastal beach sand in southern New South Wales in August 2013. Both species belong to the Dasybasis macrophthalma species-group of Mackerras (1959), one a new species, and the other D. exulans (Erichson, 1842). We describe both new im...

Horseflies (Tabanidae) are polarotactic, being attracted to linearly polarized light when searching for water or host animals. Although it is well known that horseflies prefer sunlit dark and strongly polarizing hosts, the reason for this preference is unknown. According to our hypothesis, horseflies use their polarization sensitivity to look for targets with higher degrees of polarization in t...

The female of Dasybasis elquiensis, new species, is described and illustrated from specimens collected in Paso La Ternera, Elqui Province, north Chile. Its relationships to other Dasybasis species are discussed.

Thirty six species of horse flies (Tabanidae) were previously known from Serbia (Europe). The present faunistic study of horse flies (Tabanidae) has resulted in the recording of the 4 new species Atylotus fulvus (Meigen, 1804); Tabanus miki Brauer in Brauer and Bergenstamm, 1880; Tabanus unifasciatus Loew, 1858; and Heptatoma pellucens (Fabricius, 1776), in the fauna of Serbia. The genus Heptat...

In the summers of 2001 and 2002, we quantitatively sampled human-biting flies in twelve sites located 1.6 to 63 km from a large copper-nickel smelter at Monchegorsk on the Kola Peninsula, Russia. We collected 429 specimens of three species of Ceratopogonidae, 92 specimens of seven species of Culicidae, 76 specimens of seven species of Tabanidae, and 4,788 specimens of 19 species of Simuliidae. ...

The horse fly fauna (Diptera: Tabanidae) of Jordan is, after Israel, the richest in the Levant, with 24 known species. During the 20-year project "The Ecology and Zoogeography of the Lepidoptera of the Near East," we regularly collected blood-feeding flies, resulting in 11 additional species of Tabanidae for Jordan. The new records are: Atylotus quadrifarius (Loew, 1874), Chrysops caecutiens (L...

Protosilvius gurupisp. n. (Tabanidae, Pangoniinae) is described and illustrated based on seven female and 53 male specimens collected in the Amazonian region at Reserva Biológica Gurupi, Centro Novo do Maranhão municipality, northwest Maranhão, Brazil. This is the first record of Protosilvius in northern Brazil and in the Amazon Basin. An illustrated key to all Protosilvius species is also pres...

The Egyptian fauna of the genus Tabanus Linnaeus is reviewed. Only seventeen species are recognized instead of the previous 21. This is because six species have been removed as doubtful records, and an additional two species have been added (T. leucostonus Loew, 1858 (new record) and T. arenivagus Austen, 1920). A key to Egyptian species of Tabanus is included together with illustrations. Speci...