Wikipedia
Hippoboscoidea is the name of a superfamily of the Calyptratae. The flies in this superfamily are blood-feeding obligate parasites of their hosts. Five families are often placed here:
- Glossinidae
- Hippoboscidae
- Mormotomyiidae (disputed, see Kirk-Spriggs et al., 2011)
- Nycteribiidae
- Streblidae (disputed)
The Hippoboscidae are commonly called louse flies. The bat flies are Nycteribiidae and Streblidae; the latter are probably not monophyletic and ought to be either split in two families or united with the Nycteribiidae. The family Glossinidae, monotypic as to genus, contains the tsetse flies, economically important as the vectors of trypanosomiasis. The enigmatic Mormotomyiidae are entirely monotypic at present, with the single species Mormotomyia hirsuta known from one locality in Kenya. Most probably, the Mormotomyiidae belong to the Ephydroidea.
In older literature, this group is often referred to as the Pupipara (" pupa-bearers"), because, unlike virtually all other insects, most of the larval development takes place inside the mother's body, and pupation occurs almost immediately after "birth" – in essence, instead of laying eggs, a female lays full-sized pupae one at a time. In the strict sense, the Pupipara only encompass the Hippoboscidae, Nycteribiidae, and "Streblidae", which in older works were all included in the Hippoboscidae.