Willistonininae sensu Dikow 2009a
Willistonina bilineata UCRC.
Willistonininae
– only lower facial margin slightly developed (4)
– prosternum and proepisternum separated, prosternum triangular and pointed dorsally (74)
– discal scutellar setae absent (99)
– setae on legs dorsoventrally flattened (also circular setae present) (103)
The taxon Willistoninini was described by Artigas & Papavero (1991) for the single Nearctic genus Willistonina. It was expanded by Dikow (2009) to include the Afrotropical genera Sporadothrix and Trichoura, the Afrotropical and Palaearctic genus Sisyrnodytes, and the Nearctic genus Ablautus.
Update 14 April 2011
The recent revision of Acnephalum by Londt (2010) found that Acnephalum is a senior synonym of Pycnopogon, which is not a genus that should be included in Willistonininae, and a new genus Acnephalomyia was described to accommodate the previous Afrotropical Acnephalum species not congeneric with the Palaearctic Acnephalum (+ Pycnopogon). Furthermore, Acnephalum cylindricum, which was included in Dikow (2009a,b), is a junior synonym of Sporadothrix gracilis, which needs to be added to the list of genera of Willistonininae.
In the same paper, Londt (2010) describes a new species of Ammodaimon from southern Namibia and it becomes clear that this genus also needs to be included in Willistonininae since it looks remarkably similar to the Nearctic Ablautus.