Like craneflies and mosquitoes, sandflies have feathery antennae and other features that classify them as members of the more primitive suborder Nematocera of the true flies.
The oldest fossil sandflies are from the Lower Cretaceous (about 120 million years ago) (Lewis, 1982) and blood feeding probably started with reptilian hosts.
Phlebotomus is one of at least six genera of extant (still living) sandflies. Each genus contains either New World or Old World species that obtain blood meals from mammals, birds or reptiles.
Phylogenetic relationships among phlebotomine sandflies and other flies have been reconstructed based on nuclear ribosomal RNA gene sequences (Aransay et al., 2000).
The allopatric speciation of P. papatasi from the other sandflies in the subgenus Phlebotomus has been inferred from phylogenies of mitochondrial DNA (Esseghir et al., 1997), with the Sahara being one barrier to dispersal.