ABSTRACT We present an overview of horseflies in Brazil. For this, we compiled and analyzed the data available in the Taxonomic Catalogue of the Brazilian Fauna (“Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do ...Brasil” - CTFB). A total of 496 valid species in three subfamilies and 44 genera are recorded from Brazil, of which 46.3% are endemic to the country. The genera with the highest numbers of described species are: Tabanus Linnaeus (15.5%), Fidena Walker (12.9%), Catachlorops Lutz (9.8%) and Dichelacera Macquart (7.8%). The taxonomy of Tabanidae in Brazil began with European researchers in 18th and 19th centuries. Brazilian taxonomists, beginning with Adolph Lutz, started publishing on Tabanidae only in 1907. A total of 50 researchers of different nationalities first authored the description of the Brazilian species. Of these, only seven were women. Approximately 45% of the primary types of Brazilian species are deposited in Europe, 33% in Brazil, 16% in the USA, and other 6% in South American countries or their repository is unknown. In Brazilian collections, 98% of the primary types are distributed in only four collections. Species distribution records in Brazil indicate that the regions with the highest number of recorded species (in the North and Southeast) are those that harbor the main collections of Tabanidae, as well as the states with the highest number of species, namely Amazonas, Pará and São Paulo. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest (233 spp.) and the Brazilian Amazon (222 spp.) are the most diverse regarding the distribution of species in those biomes, although the Brazilian Amazon has a greatest number of endemic species (131 spp.). The taxonomic changes proposed in this work are to revalidate the combination of Chrysops lynchi Brèthes, 1910 stat. reval., Stypommisa serena (Kröber, 1931) comb. reval., and the Tabanus ornativentris Kröber, 1929 sp. reval.
Family Tabanidae (Diptera) has cosmopolitan distribution with about 4455 described species. A comprehensive review of literature was conducted to list the recorded species from Arab countries of the ...Middle East (Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen). The study reveals the presence of 110 species in four subfamilies and 13 genera. To the moment, the Tabanidae of the Arab countries of the Middle East is poorly studied. Syria and Lebanon do not have a valid checklist, while Iraq, Palestine and the United Arab Emirates are fragmentarily studied. Jordan and Saudi Arabia were well studied. However, this study did not list any species from Bahrain and Qatar.
The taxonomic status of Agelanius antenninus (Philip, 1969) was evaluated on the basis of a morphological study of the holotype, described from Huánuco, Peru. Results of analyses of A. antenninus and ...its morphological comparison with A. meridianus Rondani, the type-species of Agelanius Rondani, proved that A. antenninus does not belong to the genus Agelanius. The subgenus Styphocera Philip is reinstated as a valid subgenus of Stypommisa Enderlein. Thus, the generic combination Stypommisa (Styphocera) antennina Philip should be reinstated for this species.
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•We attracted horseflies with water- or host-imitating black test surfaces, beneath which a heatable wire ran.•We measured the time spent by walking horseflies on the test surface ...parts with/without underlying heated or unheated wire.•Water-seeking tabanids had no preference for any area of the horizontal test surface underlaid by heated or unheated wire.•Host-seeking females preferred the surface region above the wire only if it was heated and warmer than its surroundings.•The borderlines of sunlit zebra stripes can hamper thermal vessel detection by blood-seeking female horseflies.
Several hypotheses tried to explain the advantages of zebra stripes. According to the most recent explanation, since the borderlines of sunlit white and black stripes can hamper thermal vessel detection by blood-seeking female horseflies, striped host animals are unattractive to these parasites which prefer hosts with a homogeneous coat, on which the temperature gradients above blood vessels can be detected more easily. This hypothesis has been tested in a field experiment with horseflies walking on a grey barrel with thin black stripes which were slightly warmer than their grey surroundings in sunshine, while in shade both areas had practically the same temperature. To eliminate the multiple (optical and thermal) cues of this test target, we repeated this experiment with improved test surfaces: we attracted horseflies by water- or host-imitating homogeneous black test surfaces, beneath which a heatable wire ran. When heated, this invisible and mechanically impalpable wire imitated thermally the slightly warmer subsurface blood vessels, otherwise it was thermally imperceptible. We measured the times spent by landed and walking horseflies on the test surface parts with and without underlying heated or unheated wire. We found that walking female and male horseflies had no preference for any (wired or wireless) area of the water-imitating horizontal plane test surface on the ground, independent of the temperature (heated or unheated) of the underlying wire. These horseflies looked for water, rather than a host. On the other hand, in the case of host-imitating test surfaces, female horseflies preferred the thin surface regions above the wire only if it was heated and thus warmer than its surroundings. This behaviour can be explained exclusively with the higher temperature of the wire given the lack of other sensorial cues. Our results prove the thermal vessel recognition of female horseflies and support the idea that sunlit zebra stripes impede the thermal detection of a host‘s vessels by blood-seeking horseflies, the consequence of which is the visual (non-thermal) unattractiveness of zebras to horseflies.
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