Systematics and Biogeography of Muscidae (Diptera) of the Neotropical Region (CNPq project)
The Muscidae occurs in all biogeographical regions and contains more than 4000 species. In the Neotropical region, about 800 species are recognised. Muscidae species have extremely varied habits - the larvae can be coprophagous, saprophagous or carnivorous and the adults of many species live on decaying animal or vegetable matter
The patterns of distribution of the South American muscid species are scarcely known. A small number of papers on the historical biogeography have been published for subgroups of Muscidae, a few of them dealing with Neotropical groups.
The main objetive of this project is: to describe/redescribed taxa using cladistics methodology; to discover phylogenetic relantionships within muscid genera; to describe/analyse biogeographic pattern to the Neotropical taxa.