Suhpalacsa Lefèbvre, 1842

Hassan, Muhammad Asghar & Liu, Xingyue, 2021, Taxonomic notes on owlflies from Pakistan (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae Ascalaphinae), Zootaxa 4970 (3), pp. 401-452 : 433-434

Genus Suhpalacsa Lefèbvre, 1842

Suhpalacsa Lefèbvre, 1842: 7 . Type species: Ascalaphus flavipes Leach, 1814: 48 . Subsequent designation by van der Weele, 1908: 158.

Ceraus Navás, [1901] 1900–1901: 95. Type species: Ascalaphus flavipes Leach, 1814: 48 . Subsequent designation by Oswald, 1988: 91.

Diagnosis. Ghosh (1988), New (2003) and Ábrahám (2008a) used the comparative length and width of fore- and hind wing, and the length and width of pterostigma to differentiate the genus from the closely related genus Suphalomitus van der Weele, 1909 . Thus, the pterostigma is as long as wide (in Suhpalacsa ) or longer, about twice as long as wide ( Suphalomitus ); hind wing wider ( Suphalomitus ) or shorter than forewing ( Suhpalacsa ); hind wing slightly shorter than forewing ( Suhpalacsa ) or relatively short, not extending beyond pterostigma in forewing ( Suphalomitus ).

Note. Suhpalacsa currently includes 37 described species distributed in the Palearctic, Afrotropical, Oriental and Australian regions ( Machado et al. 2019). It currently includes a single species, S. orsedice Banks in Pakistan. Suhpalacsa orsedice was firstly reported in Pakistan by Sziráki (2000) from the northern parts (Islamabad Capital) based on Ascalaphid collections housed at the Hungarian Natural History Museum, Hungary. Although, we have not examined this species in the aforementioned depository (two specimens from Pakistan: 1 male and 1 female) and we did not find any specimens in the present study from Pakistan .