Family Enicocephalidae Stål, 1860
I.M. Kerzhner
The infraorder Enicocephalomorpha includes two families, which up to recently were regarded as one family, Enicocephalidae. For this reason the main characteristic is given for the infraorder in stead of for the two families separately. Most species inhabit humid tropical regions, and only a few are known from arid zones and subtropical and temperate areas. Members of this group are found in litter, rotting wood, soil crevices, under stones along streams and in similar micro-habitats. They are undoubtedly predators, but direct observations on their feeding are scanty. Nuptial swarms, either diurnal or crepuscular, have been noticed for many species; the number of swarming individuals is often very high. Some species were collected at light. Most genera and species of Enicocephalomorpha belong to the family Enicocephalidae.
The monograph of the world fauna (Jeannel, 1942) is outdated, but more or less recent monographs have been published for Palaearctic (Štys, 1970a), Afrotropical (Villiers, 1969), Nearctic and Neotropical (Wygodzinski & Schmidt, 1991) Regions, for Taiwan (Miyamoto, 1965d), Micronesia (Usinger & Wygodzinski, 1960) and New Zealand (Woodward, 1956). Štys (1978, 1989, 1990) published a list of world genera, a revised suprageneric classification and a general account of the West Palaearctic fauna.