Prosimulium frontatum, Terteryan, 1956

Adler, Peter H., S, Ümit & Irin, 2014, Cytotaxonomy of the Prosimulium (Diptera: Simuliidae) of Western Asia, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 171 (4), pp. 753-768 : 761

PROSIMULIUM FRONTATUM

Prosimulium frontatum , a geographically restricted, Caucasian endemic of spring-fed streams, is known only from Armenia and Azerbaijan ( Adler & Crosskey, 2013), although it probably also inhabits Georgia. One of our two collection sites for P. frontatum is a mere 1.5 km south of the Georgian border. The other site is less than 50 km north of the type locality in the Artik region of Armenia. A photo of the chromosomal complement of a larva of P. frontatum from Aparan, Armenia ( Chubareva & Petrova, 2008), about 30 km east of the type locality, shows the same sequence as in our collections, including the homozygous condition for IL- 12, IIS-12, and IIIL-25; details of the IS arm in the photo of Chubareva & Petrova (2008) are not adequate to resolve the banding sequence. Our samples suggest a single chromosomally cohesive species. About 22% of our larvae of P. frontatum were patently infected by a probable new species of microsporidium with spores superficially resembling those of Weiseria laurenti ; the microsporidium is not known beyond the Caucasus, although we also found an infection in one of our Armenian larvae of P. tomosvaryi .