Abstract
The species list of Dytiscidae of Iran has been composed using recently studied material and all literature data known to us. We report 139 species of Iranian diving beetles including one Dytiscus species of uncertain taxonomic position. Two species, Agabus amoenus Solsky, 1874 and Copelatus pulchellus (Klug, 1834) are recorded for the first time from Iran. For 57 species, new provincial records are provided. Twenty-two species and one genus have been excluded from the Iranian diving beetle fauna as based on misidentifications. The distributional pattern in Iran and preferred habitat (if available) are summarised for each species and discussed in general.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to M.C. Darilmaz (Aksaray, Turkey), H. Ostovan (Shiraz, Iran) and H. Ghahari (Tehran, Iran) for providing the list of publications of the Iranian authors; H. Ostovan is additionally thanked for providing his reprints. We thank all colleagues mentioned in the Material and method section for possibility to study materal from their private collections. JH additionally thank Antonín Reiter (South Moravian Museum, Znojmo, Czech Republic) for great company during 2000 and 2006 Iranian trips, conspicuous collecting efforts and donation of his material to NMPC. Lars Hendrich is sincerely thanked for help with study of the collection of ZSM and Robert B. Angus (BMNH) for information and photos of McCullers’ ʻColymbetes koenigiʼ. We are deeply obliged to Hans Fery (Berlin, Germany) for sharing the database of Iranian records from his collection, and for critical comments on the earlier version of the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).