Phlebotomus (Paraphlebotomus) sergenti Parrot, 1917

The male has, like all Paraphlebotomus, a basal lobe on gonocoxite and its gonostyle carries four spines. However, it is easily identified by the curved shape of this basal lobe and by the brush of some setae that it carries, by its hooked parameral sheath, and by its globular gonostyle.

The female of Ph. sergenti is very difficult to separate from that of Ph. saevus . In Ph. sergenti, the well-developed pharyngeal armature contains strong elongated teeth, which are less numerous than in Ph. saevus . The geographical distribution of Ph. sergenti is very wide: from the Canary Islands to India and from Ukraine to Kenya. However, the diagnosis is delicate with an affine species Ph. similis whose distribution area that was initially thought to be limited to the North-east of the Mediterranean basin [17] is finally greater with a large area of sympatry in the Middle-East [47]. In Oman, we identified Ph. sergenti in small numbers (10 males) and still in wild sites (cavities and rocky chaos) in the Sharqiyah (Wadi Mouqal, at altitudes ranging from 550 to 600 m) and in the Dhofar (Wadi Herwouib, altitude 600 m). This species had already been captured in the north-east of the country, near the village of Awabi [61].

Ph. sergenti is the most important proven vector of L. tropica [4, 28].