Psychodidae
Psychodidae, common name moth flies, is a family of true flies. Many genera have short, hairy bodies and wings, giving them a "furry" moth-like appearance, hence one of their common names, moth flies. They are also called drain flies, sink flies, filter flies, sewer flies, or sewer gnats because a few species live in drains. Members of the sub-family Phlebotominae, which are hematophagous, may be called sand flies in some countries, although this term is also used for other unrelated flies, such as horse flies (Tabanidae) and no-see-ums (Ceratopogonidae).

Sanjay Acharya · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- moth flyPBDB
- Sits inside
- PsychodoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 205 million years on record.
The record covers at least 205.7 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 227.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
307 occurrences of Psychodidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
307 occurrences- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassic5%
- Middle Jurassic1%
- Late Jurassic8%
- Early Cretaceous16%
- Late Cretaceous17%
- Eocene29%
- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Miocene22%
- Holocene2%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
26 formations
- Daohugou Formation9
- Karabastau Formation9
- Sharteg Formation7
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group7
- Mazantic Shale Formation · Simojovel Group7
- Posidonia Shale Formation3
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The named rock units Psychodidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 241 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Psychodidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Psychodidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
4,328 taxa- Entomobrya8 sites
- Forcipomyia8 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi7 sites
- Keroplatidae7 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea7 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea7 sites
- Plagiolepis klinsmanni7 sites
- Protoscelis jurassica7 sites
- Protoscelis longicornis7 sites
- Tetraponera simplex7 sites
- Araneae6 sites
- Archirhyphus asiaticus6 sites
- Bradoponera meieri6 sites
- Diptera6 sites
- Macrochile spectrum6 sites
- Palaeopoecilostola longicornis6 sites
- Paleopsychoda jacquelinae6 sites
- Paramesopsocus adibi6 sites
- Polyanka minuta6 sites
- Prenolepis henschei6 sites
- Procramptonomyia kovalevi6 sites
- Protoscelis nitidicornis6 sites
- Ceratopogonidae5 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 139 sites for Psychodidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
117 references- Monographie des Psychodidae de l'ambre de la Baltique18
- Systematic and palaeoecology of Psychodidae (Insecta: Diptera) from Miocene Mexican amber17
- Fossil Psychodidae in Mexican amber, part 2 (Diptera: Insecta)15
- Moth flies and sand flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) in Cretaceous Burmese amber14
- Paleotelmatoscopus, a proposed new genus for some fossil moth flies (Diptera, Psychodidae, Psychodinae) in Eocene Baltic amber, with description of a new species13
- New Jurassic Tanyderidae (Diptera) from Asia with first find of larvae13
- New taxa of Tanyderidae (Diptera) from Eocene Baltic amber12
- Psychodid flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) from the Lower Cretaceous Lebanese amber11
- Synopsis of extinct Bruchomyiinae (Diptera, Psychodidae) from Burmese, Baltic and Dominican amber, with descriptions of new genera and species10
- Systematic, palaeoecology, and palaeobiogeography of the insect fauna from Mexican amber8
- New genera and species of psychodoid flies from the Lower Cretaceous amber of Lebanon8
- New species of Tanyderidae (Diptera) from the Jiulongshan Formation of China7
Each of the 307 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 105 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Psychodidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Sanjay Acharya
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Psychodidae was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Psychodidae”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPsychodoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Newman 1834