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Language: English
The bee-flies or Bombyliidae constitute one of the large and diverse families of brachycerous diptera. In general, the bombyliids are colourful flies with dense pubescence and marbled wings, and occur over a wide variety of habitats. From the dense flowering shrubs on the western Himalayas to the hot and arid areas of the Thar desert and also from the thick forests of northeast India to the inter-tidal zones of the Andaman Islands, they seem to occupy all the ecological niches.
Bowden, 1975 comprehensively catalogued the Oriental Bombyliidae and that provided the basics. Thereafter Evenhuis and Greathead, 1999, brought in nomenclatural changes which have been followed here. The present article is an overview of the diversity and distribution of the Indian species of the family Bombyliidae from the available distributional records known so far (updated till Jan. 2006). The distribution of the Indian bombyliids is dealt here as per the biogeographic regions of India (Alfred et al. 2001) and is also indicative of the habitats where they thrive.
