Description of females of <i>Fannia imperatoria</i> Nishida and <i>Phaonia vagata</i> Xue & Wang (Diptera: Muscoidea)

Muscoidea, a large dipteran superfamily, occurs in all zoogeographic regions of the world and constitutes approximately 5% of the described dipteran diversity (Kutty et al. 2008). According to present knowledge, approximately 7,000 described species are recorded worldwide (Kutty et al. 2008) in four families, Muscidae, Fanniidae, Anthomyiidae and Scathophagidae. Faunistic studies that include adult flies of Muscoidea tend to focus on males in China (e.g. Fan 1992, Xue & Chao 1998), with the tacit assumption that they represent all the sampled species at the locality. Because many species have been described from males only, and even described females are often difficult or impossible to identify, the latter have suffered a general lack of taxonomic attention. Consequently, the focus on males in species inventories of adult flies of Muscoidea is understandable and not easily overcome. Nevertheless, recognising females in this group is very important, and is convenient not only for identifying species but for further phylogenetic studies. During recent years, we have been engaged in faunal studies of this group in China. While sorting and identifying Muscidae and Fanniidae from materials on loan from Shenyang Normal University, we found female specimens of Fannia imperatoria and Phaonia vagata from Liaoning and Shanxi respectively, which enables the first description of the females of these species in the present work. In addition, further morphological information of the females of the genera Fannia and Phaonia is provided.