An updated catalogue of true flies (Insecta: Diptera) from northern Pakistan

Abstract

We present the first comprehensive catalogue of true flies from the northernmost territories of Pakistan, including Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. In the current inventory, 64 genera and 153 species in 16 families are being documented. The total number of known species has been updated based on the availability of taxonomic literatures from Pakistan. In 2007, Insect Fauna of Azad Jammu & Kashmir was updated and it lists only 16 known species in order Diptera where as there is no such documented information so far available on the dipterous fauna of Gilgit-Baltistan. However, during the last few decades, relatively a few studies have been conducted on some major group of flies, i.e., Syrphidae, Sepsidae, Calliphoridae, and Tephritidae from Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Among these, Syrphidae represents 53 species which is the highest number of species recorded, followed by Sepsidae and Calliphoridae with 20 and 18 species, respectively. The present diversity does not reflect the true species account in the northern areas; the important biogeographic area that exhibits a very heterogeneous fauna, not only because of the high mountains with valleys (the Hindu Kush and Karakoram ranges of the Western Himalayas) but also the junction points of the world’s two largest zoogeographical regions (the Oriental and Palaearctic). Some common families, i.e., Stratiomyidae, Asilidae, Bombyliidae, Muscidae, Conopidae, Pipinculidae, Tachinidae, and some other families which are common in high mountainous regions of northern Pakistan still need to be explored in the future studies. The complete locality data for each valid species are presented as the baseline for future studies from northern areas of Pakistan, i.e., Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

New faunistic data on Diptera (Hexapoda, Insecta) from the Ziarat Juniperus forest ecosystem (Pakistan)

“…Widely distributed in North America and Eurasia regions ( Rafinejad et al 2014 , Nateghpour and Akbarzadeh 2017 , Sharma et al 2018 ). This species has been reported from Asian countries including Pakistan ( Fatima and Yang 2022 , Sugiama 1989 ).…”

“…Specifically referring to Diptera , the fauna of Pakistan remains largely understudied due to the chronic scarcity of taxonomists ( Scheffers et al 2012 , Dinerstein et al 2017 ) and still much remains to be done to fill the knowledge gap, both with regard to the species presence and their distribution. In recent times, some contributions have started to help in bridging the gap providing important data for the outhern region of Punjab Province ( Bashir et al 2019 , Hassan et al 2017a ), Punjab and Khayber Pakhtunkhua ( Ashfaq et al 2022 ), Azad Jammu & Kashmir ( Hassan et al 2017 , Hassan et al 2021 ) and Gilgit-Baltistan territories ( Fatima and Yang 2022 ) and Sindh, where Syrphidae remains the most-studied family (e.g. Ansari and Memon (2017) , Kanher (2022) ).…”