Tabanus gratus Löw, 1858

Müller, Günter C., Prozorov, Alexey M., Traore, Mohamed M., Revay, Edita E., Hogsette, Jerome A., Kline, Daniel, Chaskopoulou, Alexandra, Prozorova, Tatiana A., Volkova, Julia S., Diarra, Rabiatou A., Petrányi, Gergely, Schneider, Tom, Beck, Robert H. - T., Ignatev, Nikolai, Yakovlev, Roman V., Cui, Liwang & Schlein, Yosef, 2023, The Tabanidae (Diptera) of the Greek islands and Cyprus: An annotated checklist with remarks on ecology, zoogeography, and new records on the East Mediterranean fauna, Ecologica Montenegrina 67, pp. 45-65 : 54

19. Tabanus gratus Löw, 1858

( Figs 2 , 6 , 10 )

Öfversigt af Kongliga Vetenskapsakademiens Förhandlingar, 14, 340.

Type locality. South Africa .

Range. Afrotropical and Palearctic, widespread in Africa, penetrating the Palearctic realm through the East Mediterranean from Egypt, through Western Saudi Arabia and the Levant to Iran and Afghanistan ( Oldroyd, 1954; Leclercq, 1966a; Müller et al., 2012b, Evenhuis & Pape, 2023). Recently recorded in Israel. Two females were collected in a Malaise trap near Ashdod on 15 June 2008; one male near Afula in an automatic light trap in mid-July 2012, and four females from horses near Nazareth in mid-June 2022 (Schlein, Kravchenko, Revay & Müller, unpublished data, new record for Israel). We collected two females while feeding on horses at the outskirts of Limassol in Cyprus in July 2009, a single male in an automatic light trap 12 km east of Paphos in 2012, and two females in a Malaise trap near Stavrovouni Monastery in an old olive grove with grazing donkeys in early July 2017 (new record for Cyprus).

Figures

Figures 1–4. Adults of Tabanidae, dorsal view. 1. Atylotus agrestis. 2. Tabanus gratus. 3. Tabanus taeniola. 4. Tabanus sufis. Scale bar – 5 mm

Figures 5–8. Adults of Tabanidae, lateral view. 5. Atylotus agrestis. 6. Tabanus gratus. 7. Tabanus taeniola. 8. Tabanus sufis. Scale bar – 5 mm.

Figures 9–12. Adults of Tabanidae, frontal view. 9. Atylotus agrestis. 10. Tabanus gratus. 11. Tabanus taeniola. 12. Tabanus sufis. Scale bar – 5 mm.