A preliminary taxonomic study of hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) from the Pothwar Region of Punjab, Pakistan

The family Syrphidae (Diptera) is among the well-explored and taxonomically up-to-date dipteran families in Pakistan, with over 100 species documented to date. In this study, nine tribes, 26 genera, and 46 syrphid species were recorded from the Pothwar region of Punjab, Pakistan. Of these, three genera, Didea Macquart, 1834, Melangyna Verrall, 1901, and Parasyrphus Matsumura, 1917, along with seven species, including Allobaccha apicalis (Loew, 1858), Asarkina bhima Ghorpadé, 1994, Didea vockerothi Ghorpadé, 1994, Eristalinus tristriatus (Meijere, 1911), Melangyna remota (Brunetti, 1923), Parasyrphus thompsoni Ghorpadé, 1994, and Rhingia laticincta Brunetti, 1907, are newly recorded from Pakistan. The majority of these species were collected from forest areas, particularly near standing water or under pine tree canopies. Sixteen species were also observed on the invasive plant Parthenium hysterophorus in the region. This study provides a preliminary checklist of 46 species from the Pothwar region, including their current distribution in Pakistan, habitat information, and digital photographs of each species. In terms of regional species richness, Punjab province contained the largest number of species (44 species: 95.6%) in Pakistan, followed by Azad Kashmir (31 species: 67.3%), Islamabad Capital Territory (28 species: 60.8%), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (20 species: 56.5%), Sindh (11 species: 23.9%), Balochistan (10 species: 21.7%), and Gilgit-Baltistan (7 species: 15.2%).