Protidricerus van der Weele, 1909

Hassan, Muhammad Asghar & Liu, Xingyue, 2021, Taxonomic notes on owlflies from Pakistan (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae Ascalaphinae), Zootaxa 4970 (3), pp. 401-452 : 429

Genus Protidricerus van der Weele, 1909

Protidricerus van der Weele, 1909: 61 . Type species: Idricerus exilis McLachlan, 1894: 424 . Original designation.

Diagnosis. Protidricerus can be characterized by its entire-eyes, unlike other members of the tribe Ascalaphini , which have eyes that are split by a transverse furrow. The species are generally dark grey or black, with hyaline wings, the anal area of the forewing with weakly or distinctly produced triangular projection and the apical area beyond Sc+R vein has three rows of cells.

Note. Jones (2019) remarked that the traditional concept of entire or divided-eye is no longer the distinctive characteristics to differentiate between Ascalaphini & Haplogleniini , as the genus Protidricerus exhibits the distinctive feature of well-developed pleurostoma, a small facial sclerite previously only encountered in divided‐eye owlflies. Although we followed the new classification system proposed by Machado et al. (2019) for our present manuscript, the exact placement of this genus in the tribe Haplogleniini ( Jones 2014, 2019) or Ascalaphini ( Machado et al. 2019) remains uncertain and must be resolved in future studies. Protidricerus is the only entire-eyed owlfly genus in the tribe Ascalaphini in Pakistan. It includes seven described species that are distributed in the Central, East and South Asia ( Machado et al. 2019).