Philodicus Loew, 1847

Tomasovic, Guy, Constant, Jérôme & Rasmont, 1802, Notes on Oriental Asilidae with six new species from Vietnam (Diptera: Brachycera), Belgian Journal of Entomology 47, pp. 1-23 : 1-23

Genus Philodicus Loew, 1847

Type species: Asilus javanus Wiedemann, 1819 .

DIKOW (2009) treated the placement of the Apocleini within the family Asilidae . The tribe Apocleini is characterized by a supernumerary crossvein between R 2,3- and R 4 ( Fig. 1 ) and contains four genera, Apoclea Macquart, 1838 , Megaphorus Bigot, 1857 , Philodicus Loew, 1847 and Promachus Loew, 1848 .

Detailed illustrations of the wing venation were provided by LONDT (2005). The genus Philodicus is distributed in the Afrotropical, Oriental and Palaearctic regions ( GELLER-GRIMM, 2003), with three species known in Southeast Asia: P. chinensis Schiner, 1868 and P. fuscipes Ricardo, 1921 from Thailand, and P. rufiventris Bigot, 1890 from Laos ( OLDROYD, 1975). The last species is known only from the female holotype. The species of Philodicus are very similar and difficult to separate. THEODOR (1976) has shown the importance of the characters of the aedeagus in the taxonomy and systematics of the Asilidae and LONDT (1978) stressed on the fact that the shape of the tip of the phallus is a very useful character in the separation of Philodicus species.

DISTRIBUTION Figs 2–3 .

The genus is present in the Afrotropical, Oriental and Palaearctic regions ( Fig. 2 ). The recorded distribution of the four species of Philodicus of Southeast Asia is illustrated on Fig. 3 .

The data of the map were taken from FREY (1934), JOSEPH & PARUI (1987; 1990a, b; 1991a, b; 1992a, b; 1993; 1994; 1997a, b), LEHR (1997), LONDT (1978), OLDROYD (1970) and TOMASOVIC (2006, 2012), with the addition of data from specimens in the collections of RBINS, GxABT, RMNH and OUMNH (Tomasovic, unpublished data)

Phenology of the species of the genus Philodicus from Southeast Asia

Fig. 4 .

Adults of Philodicus spp. are present all year round with peaks of abundance in July and September.

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Figures

Fig. 1. Wing venation in different genera of Apocleini. A, Alcimus. B, Philodicus. C, Promachus (modified from LONDT, 2005).

Fig. 2. Distribution of the genus Philodicus Loew, 1847 (898 specimens).

Fig. 3. Distribution of the four species of genus Philodicus in Southeast Asia. z: Philodicus chinensis, 9 specimens; ¡: Philodicus fuscipes, 143 specimens; •: Philodicus javanus, 35 specimens; ®: Philodicus phiadenensis, 1 specimen.

Fig. 4. Phenology of the species of the genus Philodicus in Vietnam and Cambodia.