Revising Spider Egg-predating Fly Records (Diptera: Sarcophagidae): New Insights on Prey, Taxonomy, and Distribution of () Hall in Southern South America.

Flesh flies (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) exhibit a wide range of feeding habits including necrophagy, coprophagy, kleptoparasitism, parasitism, and predation. Among them are species of Meigen belonging to the subgenera Lopes and Enderlein that are specialized predators of spider eggs. These flies hover around spider webs and lay their larvae on the spider egg sac. While progress has been made on the taxonomy of and in recent decades, our knowledge about their biology, prey selection, and distribution remains limited, restricting our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of Sarcophagidae-Araneae interactions. Here, we describe and illustrate the first record of . (.) Hall preying on egg sacs of (Thorell) (Araneae: Araneidae) in Chile. The taxonomy of . (.) is revised, with two new junior synonyms proposed: Lopes and Tibana, syn. nov., and Tibana and Mello, syn. nov. Furthermore, we present an annotated catalog that comprehensively reviews the existing records of spider egg-predating Sarcophagidae, and provide an overview of the evolution of Sarcophagidae-Araneae interactions. Our catalog includes information on at least four species of and 10 species of that have been documented as preying on eggs from species of various spider families, such as Araneidae, Cheiracanthiidae, Clubionidae, Philodromidae, Salticidae, and Tetragnathidae. These records cover all biogeographical regions except the Afrotropical. Our results enhance our understanding of the evolution of Sarcophagidae-Araneae interactions.