Diadocidiidae

Oliveira, Sarah S., Afiune, Giovana P. S., Schelesky-Prado, Daniel de C., Maia, Valéria C., Amorim, Dalton de S. & Falaschi, Rafaela L., 2024, Taxonomic Catalog of the Brazilian Fauna: Bibionomorpha (Diptera) diversity and distribution, Zoologia (e 23103) 41, pp. 1-17 : 5

Diadocidiidae

This family includes two genera with 29 extant described species worldwide. Of these, 27 species belong to the extant genus Diadocidia Ruthe, 1831 . There are only two species assigned to a fossil genus from the Cretaceous amber from Katchin, Myanmar, known as Docidiadia Blagoderov and Grimaldi, 2004 ( Blagoderov and Grimaldi 2004, Amorim and Brown 2022), but the association of the genus to the Diadocidiidae still demands corroboration. In the Neotropical region, there are three described species of Diadocidia ( Bechev and Chandler 2011) , and only one known from Brazil ( Falaschi 2024a). Papavero (1977a) mentioned a second undescribed species from Chile, Vockeroth (2009) referred to an undescribed species from Mexico, and Falaschi (2016a) reported the genus in Colombia.

The biology of these gnats is poorly known; the limited knowledge available suggests that they are common in forest habitats ( Bechev and Chandler 2011). The larvae of these gnats are associated with decaying wood and develop within a mucous tube under rotting logs. They primarily feed on the hymenium of higher fungi ( Hutson et al. 1980, Yakovlev 1994, Zaitzev 1994).