New records of long-legged flies (Diptera, Dolichopodidae) from Morocco

This paper provides new data on the distribution of 39 long-legged fly species (Diptera, Brachycera, Dolichopodidae) belonging to 19 genera from Morocco. Twelve species, Gymnopternus assimilis (Staeger, 1842), Hercostomus apollo (Loew, 1869), Hercostomus morenae (Strobl, 1899), Medetera media Parent, 1925, Medetera pallipes (Zetterstedt, 1843), Medetera petrophiloides Parent, 1925, Medetera aff. roghii Rampini et Canzoneri, 1979, Micromorphus minusculus Negrobov, 2000, Sciapus aff. negrobovi Naglis et Bartak, 2015, Campsicnemus simplicissimus Strobl, 1906, Sympycnus pulicarius (Fallén, 1823), and Syntormon pilitibia Grichanov, 2013 are newly added to the Moroccan insect fauna. In addition, available information on geographical distribution for each species is also included.


Introduction
Dolichopodidae (Diptera, Brachycera) is a large, diverse and cosmopolitan family of flies commonly known as long-legged flies, including 8,000 species in 250 genera (Grichanov, 2017).
Morocco is part of the Mediterranean See Basin, lying between the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and Sahara desert.Its territory can be conditionally divided into 7 natural areas: the North (Rif), East of Morocco (EM), Atlantic Plains (AP), Middle Atlas (MA), High Atlas (HA), Anti Atlas (AA) and Sahara (Rankou et al. 2015;Kettani, Negrobov 2016).Apart from the southeast regions (pre-Saharan and desert areas), Morocco's climate and geography are very similar to the Iberian Peninsula.
The Moroccan fauna of Dolichopodidae is insufficiently investigated and rarely found in literary sources as the distribution of individual species is comparatively rare.
The first contribution to the fauna of Dolichopodidae of Morocco was made in 1805 by Fabricius, who listed in his first checklist of Diptera of Morocco one species, Anahydrophorus cinereus (Fabricius, 1805) (as Scatophaga cinerea Fabricius, 1805).Later, several authors described or found new species either for science or for Morocco, as those of Macquart (1842), Becker, Stein (1913), Parent (1924Parent ( -1950)), Séguy (1930Séguy ( -1953)), Vaillant (1950Vaillant ( -1956)), Boumezzough, Vaillant (1986), Gatt (2003), Pârvu (2006Pârvu ( -2008)), Grichanov (2009Grichanov ( -2010)), Grichanov, Negrobov (2014) and recently Ebejer et al., 2019.As for the recent bibliographic data relating to exhaustive compilations on Dolichopodidae known in Morocco, three significant publications listed an inventory of these insects on the basis of literature records.One is that of Dakki (1997) who established a checklist of 32 species for aquatic Dolichopodidae within his contribution in the study of the national biodiversity dedicated to the fauna of Morocco.The earlier one was established by Negrobov (1991) who has included 44 species known from the country; however, some old species records were lost.The latest compilation was realized by Kettani and Negrobov (2016) who have compiled a check-list of Moroccan long-legged flies including 63 species; however, some old and recent species records were again lost.Later 16 species new for the country have been reported (Ebejer et al. 2019).Several species have been probably mentioned by various authors in error from the territory or recorded by females only.Their presence in Moroccan fauna must be confirmed.
Preparing a chapter for the forthcoming Catalog of Diptera of Morocco, we have found 90 species of the family published in many references since 1805.Nevertheless, the total number of Moroccan species can reach to 300 ISSN 2412-1908; http://journal.asu.ru/biolspecies.For example, the fauna of neighbouring Spain contains nearly 200 and that of France -nearly 400 species (Naglis, Bartak, 2015;Grichanov, 2017).
Recent field work in different areas from Morocco has uncovered many species not previously known.The aim of this article is to contribute to a better knowledge of this fauna by providing new records for an up-to-date checklist.

Material and methods
This study was based on entomological field investigations to collect new samples from a multitude of habitats mainly belonging to the Rif and to a limited degree to the Atlasic domain, comprising a total of 53 surveyed sites.
The Rif, extending in an arc from the Straits of Gibraltar to the valley of Moulouya, are a succession of coastal mountains belonging to the Alpine system, which culminate somewhere near its center at Jbel Tidighine (2456 m).Table 1 summarizes the main geographical and cartographical data of studied sites.The altitudes of the stations range between 0 and 2017 m.They cover a variety of habitats as forests, mountains, valleys, springs, streams, meadows, marshes, peat bogs, cultured fields and greenhouses, resulting from the diverse geomorphology and climate of the country.
The material referred to in this work comes from two main sources.The first part of the material presented in this work was captured by Nourti Mohamed between 2017 and 2019.The second part of the material is a large collection of specimens in alcohol, mostly hand swept from river banks and riparian vegetation by Kawtar Kettani and her students between 2010 and 2019.The material collected during joint field trips of all authors of this paper in July 2019 is also included.Two sites in the Rif Mountains have been visited (Figs 1, 2), the God's Bridge (or Pont de Dieu in French) at Akchour village (the Talassemtane National Park, 1 July) and the Lemtahane marsh at Amsemlil (the Bouhachem Natural Park, 4 July 2019).The specimens have been collected using entomological sweep nets (SN in the following list) and Malaise traps (MT), then transferred to bottles using aspirators or eclectors (Černý, von Tschirnhaus, 2014) and stored in 70% of alcohol.
Material cited in this work is housed at the Laboratoire Ecologie, Systématique et Conservation de la Biodiversité, Faculté des Sciences, Université Abdelmalek Essaâdi, Tétouan, Morocco and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Results
We founded 39 species belonging to 19 genera, including twelve species new for Morocco and two undescribed species.In the following list, the individual species are arranged alphabetically within each genus.