Batrachomyia Krefft

Evenhuis, Neal L., 2006, First record of the frog parasite genus Batrachomyia Krefft from New Guinea (Diptera: Chloropidae), Zootaxa 1351, pp. 53-59 : 54

Genus Batrachomyia Krefft

Batrachomyia Krefft, 1864: 100 . Type species: Batrachomyia nigritarsis Skuse, 1889 , by subsequent designation ( Malloch, 1931: 74).

The genus Batrachomyia was described by Krefft (1864), who gave details on its biology but failed to name an included species. Skuse (1889) provided the first two named species in the genus ( nigritarsis and quadrilineata ) but did not specify a type species for the genus. Malloch (1931) was the first to designate a type species ( nigritarsis ). Sabrosky (1941) further clarified the nomenclatural history of the genus-group name.

Malloch (1925) described the next two included species ( atricornis and flavicornis ), then (1927) described two more ( major and strigipes ) and later (1940) added an additional two ( dubia and varipes ). Sabrosky (1955) described one species ( occidentalis ) and transferred one previously described species to Batrachomyia [ vicaria Walker (1849) ]. Lindner (1958) added the last recorded species ( mertensi ). Malloch (1927, 1940) and Sabrosky (1955) provided the only keys to species in the genus and Sabrosky (1989) was the last to catalog all the species giving their distributions known at that time.

Currently, there are 11 known species in the genus—all (except B. occidentalis from Western Australia) from the eastern and southeastern coasts of mainland Australia and Tasmania. Adults are generally yellowish to orange in body color with various patterns of black on the head, thorax and/or legs. All known immature stages of species of Batrachomyia are subdermal parasites in various species of frogs ( Table 1 ) of the families Hylidae , Myobatrachidae , and newly recorded here from Ranidae . The geographically closest Australian species to the new species from New Guinea is B. mertensi from Queensland. All other Australian species are found further south or on the western coast.