Dolichopodidae (Diptera) new for the fauna of Finland

Long-legged flies (family Dolichopodidae) are delicate, small to medium-sized, usually greenish flies. The Dolichopodidae fauna of the world is very species rich, with approximately 6,600 described species in 220 genera (Grichanov 2003). These flies are distributed throughout the world from arctic islands to the tropics, where the species diversity is highest. The adults and larvae of almost all Finnish species are predators inhabiting various humid habitats. The Finnish dolichopodid fauna was studied with varying intensity during the first half of the 20 century, mainly by R. Frey, R. Storå and E. Thuneberg. After 1960 the interest in this insect group waned and most of the material collected by Finnish entomologists was left unidentified. The existing faunistic knowledge was summarized by W. Hackman (1980) in his check-list of Finnish Diptera. A number of species were erroneously included in the Finnish fauna by Negrobov (1991) in the Palaearctic catalogue of Diptera which was based on a species list from the “Diptera Fennica” part of the Zoological Museum, Finnish Museum of Natural History (FMNH) collection (Negrobov pers. comm.). The collection was created nearly 100 years ago as a depository of material from Finland and the eastern parts of Karelia and the Murmansk Region. We assume Negrobov did not check geographical labels while listing species and as a result, some specimens originating from Russia were listed from Finland. The Finnish material of Dolichopodidae in main Finnish insect collections has been revised by the authors. During this investigation 28 dolichopodid species proved to be new for Finland. This paper presents the new records in detail.