107 



A CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE BLOOD-SUCKING 

 DIPTERA OF PALESTINE, OTHER THAN TABANIDAE.* 



By Major E. E. Austen, D.S.O. 



(Plate IV.) 



As in the case of the Tabanidae, which liave ah'eady been described,* the 

 material upon which the following paper is based was collected by the author 

 during the Palestine Campaign of 1917-18. 



All the specimens, including types of new species, are in the British Museum 

 ^Natural History). 



Family CHIRONOMIDAE. 



Sub-family Ceratopogoninae. 



Genus Leptoconops, Skuse. 



Syn. Tcrsesthcs, Townsend. 



Leptoconops kerteszi, Kieffer.j 



In abundance near Wadi Ghuzze, on Cairo road about 5 miles S.-W. of Gaza, 

 on afternoon of 14. v. 1917 ; setthng in numbers on the faces of the writer and a 

 companion. 



L. kerteszi, Kieffer, originahy described (Ann. Mus. Nat. Hung., vi, pp. 576-577, 

 1908) from material taken at Cairo, and subsequently recorded by. Kieffer {op. cit., 

 xvi, p. 34, 1918) as occurring in Tunisia, is already represented in the National 

 Collection by a series of specimens from Ouargla, Algeria {Dr. E. Hartert), March 1912, 

 bearing the "following field-note by the collector : — " Exceedingly numerous in some 

 of the oases south of Biskra, and very troublesome to mules." It may be added 

 that at Bir el-Abd, Northern Sinai (50 miles E. of Kantara), 9.xii.l916, the writer 

 met with two females of what appeared to be this species on the margin of a small 

 salt lake, and was bitten by one of them on the arm at midday. 



In life the dorsum of the abdomen of this little midge shows a double, longi- 

 tudinal series of admedian, dark brown blotches, separated by neutral grey +, triangular 

 interspaces ; the venter is whitish ; the wings, the surface of which is apparently 

 bare, are uniformly milk-white, except that in each wing the fused ends of the first 

 and third longitudinal veins are expanded to form a kind of stigma, which is large 

 and very conspicuous, and of a striking orange colour ; the halteres are pale buff. 



The suggestion by Kieffer {op. cit., vi, p. 577) that Tersesthes,TovfnsQndi (founded 

 for a species which attacks horses at fairly high altitudes— 5,700-7,000 ft.— in New 

 Mexico) is probably identical with Leptoconops, Skuse, is undoubtedly correct. 



* For Tabanidae cf. the author's paper " A Contribution to Knowledge of the Tabanidae 

 of Palestine " : Bull. Ent. Res., x, pt. 3, pp. 277-321, figs. 1-18 (April 1920). 



t In 1918 this species was selected bv Kieffer as the type of a new genus, which he briefly 

 characterised (Ann. Mus. Nat. Hung., xvi, p. 135, 1918) under the name Holoconops, relying 

 upon the number of joints in the anteniiia of the 2 to justify a generic distinction. As was 

 recently shown, however, by Mr. H. F. Carter in his admirable " Revision of the Genus Lepto- 

 conops, Skuse"' (Bull. EAt. Res., xii. pt. 1, pp. 1-28, June 1921), it is impossible to accord to 

 Holoconops anything more than subgeneric rank, 



X For names and illustrations of colours used for descriptive purposes in the present paper, 

 see Ridgway, " Color Standards and Color Nomenclature " (Washington, D.C. Published by the 

 Author, 1912). 



(3442) P8/I70 1000 8/21 Harrow G 75. i 



