Review of the genus Pelecocera Meigen, 1822 (Diptera, Syrphidae) in the Palaearctic with the description of a new species from Cyprus

Abstract

The study of the hoverfly fauna of Cyprus resulted in the discovery of one new species to science, Pelecocera hederae van Eck spec. nov. In the present study, the new species is described in full and all other Palaearctic Pelecocera species are commented. As a result of this study, a revised identification key to the Palaearctic species of Pelecocera is presented. In addition, we performed a DNA barcoding analysis for the Palaearctic species of Pelecocera, including new DNA data and all the Pelecocera sequences publicly available. DNA barcoding supports the new species Pelecocera hederae van Eck spec. nov., as well as most of the Palaearctic species of this genus, with the exception of two pairs of taxa: Pelecocera (Chamaesyrphus) japonica (Shiraki, 1956) and Pelecocera (Chamaesyrphus) lusitanica (Mik, 1898), and Pelecocera (Chamaesyrphus) pruinosomaculata Strobl, 1906 and Pelecocera (Chamaesyrphus) scaevoides (Fallén, 1817). Taxonomic acts Pelecocera hederae spec. nov. – urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:6674C895-CB63-4379-BA8B-227F779481CF