Muscoidea is a superfamily of flies in the subsection Calyptratae. Muscoidea, with approximately 7000 described species, is nearly 5% of the known species level diversity of the Diptera, the true flies. Most muscoid flies are saprophagous, coprophagous or necrophagous as larvae, but some species are parasitic, predatory, or phytophagous. In September 2008, a study was done on the superfamily using both nucleic and mitochondrial DNA and the conclusion suggested that Muscoidea may actually be paraphyletic.
References
Ding, Shuangmei; Li, Xuankun; Wang, Ning; Cameron, Stephen L.; Mao, Meng; Wang, Yuyu; Xi, Yuqiang; Yang, Ding (2015-07-30). "The Phylogeny and Evolutionary Timescale of Muscoidea (Diptera: Brachycera: Calyptratae) Inferred from Mitochondrial Genomes". PLOS ONE. 10 (7): e0134170. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1034170D. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134170. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 4520480. PMID 26225760. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4520480 ↩
Kutty, Sujatha Narayanan; Pape, Thomas; Pont, Adrian; Wiegmann, Brian; Meier, Rudolf (September 2008). "The Muscoidea (Diptera: Calyptratae) are paraphyletic: Evidence from four mitochondrial and four nuclear genes". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 49 (2): 639–652. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2008.08.012. PMID 18793735. Retrieved 3 July 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23257912 ↩