Sulcicnephia znoikoi (Rubtsov)

Crosskey, R. W., 2002, A taxonomic account of the black y fauna of Iraq and Iran, including keys for species identi cation (Diptera: Simuliidae), Journal of Natural History 36 (15), pp. 1841-1886 : 1858

2. Sulcicnephia znoikoi (Rubtsov)

Iran references. Crosskey and Howard (1997, world inventory entry).

Iraq references. None.

Material seen

Iran: 28 pupae (including pharate,, two pupae dried and card-mounted, pharate genitalia and pupal gill slides), [Iranian] Azarbaijan -e Khavari, Sarab , between Tabriz and Ardabil (37ss56¾/47ss35¾), 15 August 1977 (Assmar) .

Remarks

The genus Sulcicnephia Rubtsov ranges from the Transcaucasus to Mongolia, China and eastern Siberia and is particularly characteristic of mountain rivers in the Central Asian Republics. Sulcicnephia znoikoi is the westernmost species, centred on Azerbaijan, occurring in Armenia ( Terteryan, 1968) and now found in Iran. The original description ( Rubtsov, 1940) was based on a series of males and females from Azerbaijan, of which a male lectotype with the data Transcaucasus, Nakhichevan, 19 June 1933 (Znoiko) ( ZISP, slide preparation No. 3144) has been designated by Yankovsky (1989). The aquatic stages were described by Djafarov (1952, 1960) from Azerbaijan, but his illustration of the 11- lamented pupal gill seems to have been drawn from a slide in which the laments have been spread under pressure and are not in the bundle-like con guration of the natural gill. The lament number (11) in S. znoikoi is exceptional, as usually in Sulcicnephia the gill has an even number of laments (10, 12, 18), though the gill of S. undecimata (Rubtsov) from Central Asia, as its name indicates, also has 11 laments; the latter diVers from S. znoikoi in having the gill laments widely spread instead of bundle-like and in the short cocoon leaving much of the back of the thorax exposed. The pupal gill of S. znoikoi has a distinctive three-dimensional and typically fascicular con guration, often with the tips of the laments intertwining (as shown for a pupa from the Iranian material in gure 50). The 11 laments arise from three short trunks, a ventral trunk forking into two laments, an outer trunk branching into three laments, and a main inner dorsal trunk that almost immediately divides into two smaller trunks each of which carries three laments; the gill branch formula is thus 21 (31 3)1 3. Larvae were not available with the Iranian pupae but should be readily recognized by the characteristic form of the large postgenal cleft (gure 12, after Terteryan).

The speci c name was accidently spelt znoikoi and znojkoi in the original description, hence the latter spelling has had some use in the literature, including the Palaearctic catalogue of Rubtsov and Yankovsky (1988); znoikoi is the correct spelling, as used by Rubtsov (1956, 1961, 1962 a, 1962b) is his illustrated descriptions, conforming to Roman alphabet transliteration of the Russian collector’s name, D. V. Znoiko.