History of the study of Dolichopodidae on Seychelles
Before 1922 only one dolichopodid species was known from Seychelles: Psilopus leptogaster Thomson, 1869, mentioned by Giglio-Tos (1895: 359). It is now in the genus Mascaromyia Bickel, 1994. In 1922 Charles Georges Lamb published a remarkable article about Diptera species (Asilidae, Scenopinidae, Dolichopodidae, Pipunculidae, and Syrphidae) found during the Percy Sladen Trust expedition to the Indian Ocean in 1905. In this article he described three new genera from the Seychelles within the family Dolichopodidae, viz. Argyrochlamys, Craterophorus, and Urodolichus. In all he mentioned 31 species (including three species with only indication of the genus) of Dolichopodidae found on the Seychelles (including Aldabra), 22 of which were new to science. In 1926 Lamb described Sympycnus albipes Lamb, 1926 (now in the genus Chaetogonopteron), from Rodriguez, and Parent (1934: 300) cited it from Seychelles. In 1996 Grichanov mentioned Bickelia subparallela Grichanov, 1996 (now considered as a synonym of Bickelia parallela (Macquart, 1842) (Grichanov, 2003: 331). Finally Meuffels and Grootaert (2007) reported 28 species from the isles of Silhouette I., North I., D’Arros (Amirante Is) and Picard I. (Aldabra Is). Of them 22 species are recorded for the first time on Seychelles and the genus Aldabromyia was described as new as were nine species. In order to show the diversity of dolichopodids on Seychelles, another seven species were briefly described, but not named (Meuffels & Grootaert, loc. cit.).
For the present work we revised all Lamb’s type material. Thanks to that we put Mischopyga Grootaert & Meuffels, 1990 a monotypic genus described from mangrove on the southern coast of Papua New Guinea as junior synonym of Urodolichus Lamb, 1922 described from terrestrial habitats at medium and high altitude on Mahé.