Addenda to the insect fauna of Al-Baha Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with zoogeographical notes

ABSTRACT The first list of insects (Arthropoda: Hexapoda) of Al-Baha Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was published in 2013 and contained a total of 582 species. In the present study, 142 species belonging to 51 families and representing seven orders are added to the fauna of Al-Baha Province, bringing the total number of species now recorded from the province to 724. The reported species are assigned to recognized regional zoogeographical regions. Seventeen of the species are recorded for the first time for KSA, namely: Platypleura arabica Myers [Cicadidae, Hemiptera]; Cletomorpha sp.; Gonocerus juniperi Herrich-Schäffer [Coreidae, Hemiptera]; Coranus lateritius (Stål); Rhynocoris bipustulatus (Fieber) [Reduviidae, Hemiptera]; Cantacader iranicus Lis; Dictyla poecilla Drake & Hill [Tingidae, Hemiptera]; Mantispa scabricollis McLachlan [Mantispidae, Neuroptera]; Cerocoma schreberi Fabricius [Meloidae, Coleoptera]; Platypus parallelus (Fabricius) [Curculionidae, Coleoptera]; Zodion cinereum (Fabricius) [Conopidae, Diptera]; Ulidia ?ruﬁceps Becker [Ulidiidae, Diptera]; Atherigona reversura Villeneuve [Muscidae, Diptera]; Aplomya metallica (Wiedemann); Cylindromyia sp. [Tachinidae, Diptera]; Messor semirufus (André); and Nesomyrmex denticulatus (Mayr) [Formicidae, Hymenoptera]. Also, the reduviid bug Dasycnemus sahlbergi Bergroth, that was questionably recorded from KSA is confirmed herein as occurring in KSA. The generic name Peirates (Reduviidae, Hemiptera) and the specific name of Apis florea Fabricius (Apidae, Hymenoptera) were inadvertently misspelled in the original list and are corrected here. Zoogeographically, the present study supports the original study conclusion that the insect species composition of Al-Baha Province is strongly affiliated with the Afrotropical Region rather than to the Palearctic Region or the Eremic Zone. Our insect surveys emphasize the fact that parts of the Arabian Peninsula, including Al-Baha Province, ought to be considered part of the Afrotropical Region rather than in the Palaearctic Region or the Eremic Zone.


Introduction
surveyed the insect fauna of Al-Baha Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), reporting a total number of 582 species belonging to 129 families and representing 17 orders. Since this publication, new collections of insects were made in the province revealing additional insect records, as reported herein.
Al-Baha Province (Figure 1) is situated in the south-western part of KSA between the Holy Makkah and Asir regions (Doha 2009), It is the smallest province in KSA (about 10,362 km 2 ), situated at 41-42°E and 19-20°N. It is characterized by natural tree cover and agricultural plateaus. The province is divided by huge and steep rocky mountains into two main sectors, a lowland coastal plain in the west, known as 'Tihama', and a mountainous area with an elevation of 1500-2450 m above sea level at the east, known as 'Al-Sarat' or 'Al-Sarah' which form a part of Al-Sarawat Mountains range (Ibrahim and Abdoon 2005;Alahmed et al. 2010;  -Hawagry et al. 2013). For more details on the topography and climate of Al-Baha Province, see our previous study (El-Hawagry et al. 2013).

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Al-Baha Province ( Figure 2) consists of six main districts, four of which are located in Al-Sarah sector beside downtown 'Al-Baha', i.e. Al-Aqiq, Al-Mandaq, Al-Qura, and Baljurashi, while two of the districts are located in Tihama sector, namely Al-Mekhwa including Dhee Ain Village (The Marble Village), and Qelwa (El-Hawagry et al. 2013).
Many authors assume that the Afrotropical Region covers all of Africa south of the Sahara, with the island of Madagascar and the nearby smaller islands, and include parts of the Arabian Peninsula in the region, but there seems to be no agreement as to how much. This may be deduced from the fact that the south-western and southern parts of the Arabian Peninsula including the study area are strongly influenced by a subtropical to tropical climate with spring and summer rains, and are thus dominated by a xeromesic tropical flora of palaeotropical origin, that in fact represents the impoverished northern part of an African flora. Examples of species with this conspicuous distribution pattern, linking south-west Arabia with the other side of the Red Sea, are Acacia spp., Aloe spp., Celosia spp., Celtis spp., Commiphora spp., succulent Euphorbia spp., Grewia spp., Kalanchoe spp., Nuxia spp., Olea spp., Sansevieria spp., and semi-evergreen sclerophyllous woodlands of the montane vegetation. Nevertheless, Mediterranean and northern temperate floristic elements are well represented in the study area with many plant species including Lavandula spp., Nepeta sheilae, Erica arborea, Scabiosa, Silene, Trifolium, Arabis alpine, Peucedanum and Pimpinella (Ghazanfar and Fisher 1998). Sclater (1858) and Wallace (1876) proposed the classical zoogeographical regions and placed the northern border of the Afrotropics along the Tropic of Cancer. Accordingly, Al-Baha Province was included in the Afrotropical Region, and the northern limit of the Afrotropical Region was placed in Taif area, about 200 km north to Al-Baha (Hölzel 1998). Crosskey (1980) used the northern boundaries of Yemen as the regional boundary between the Afrotropical and Palaearctic parts in the Arabian Peninsula. Extensive sampling of Diptera in the Arabian Peninsula by many authors, especially in Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and south-western mountains of KSA, have raised some interesting questions in respect to the true extent of the Afrotropical Region in this important transitional zone, indicating that Wallace's (1876) concept of the extent of the Afrotropical Arabian Peninsula is more accurate than Crosskey's (1980) limited concept of Yemen alone (Kirk-Spriggs andMcGregor 2009). However, Uvarov (1938), Greathead (1980) and Larsen (1984) agreed that the south-western part of KSA including Al-Baha should be united with the central Arabian deserts which are either considered as a part of the Palaearctic or by some authors as an autonomous Eremic Zone (also called the Saharo-Sindian faunal region). The study of El-Hawagry et al. (2013) confirmed that the insect species composition in Al-Baha Province is representative of species typically considered Afrotropical elements, as is the present list.

Material and methods
Insect material for the present study was collected extensively from different localities in Al-Baha Province from 2011 to 2014 by the authors using sweep and aerial nets, bait traps, beating sheets, soil examination, hand picking, light traps, Malaise traps, pitfall traps, sticky traps, tray sifting of debris, and yellow pan traps (Evans 1975;Borror et al. 1989). For more details on the collecting methods for each insect group, see our previous study (El-Hawagry et al. 2013). Some of the specimens collected and deposited in King Saud University Museum of Arthropods were inadvertently not treated in our previous study (El-Hawagry et al. 2013). Literature records of some species are also noted.
All taxa are arranged in alphabetical order. Sites and dates of collection are included for the purpose of mapping distribution and activity periods of species in the study area. Each collection site is followed, between parentheses, by the district to which it belongs in Al-Baha Province. Also, the coordinates of each site are given. Data from 'Jebel Shada Al A'la', a protected area situated at the south-western Al-Baha Province, has been excluded from this study and will be published later.
Zoogeographical affiliations of species reported in each of the two main sectors of the province were detected using world catalogues and counted to calculate the percentage of Afrotropical, Palaearctic or Oriental elements in each sector. These percentages give a picture about the extent of zoogeographical affinity in each sector.
Images of newly recorded species were made using a Leica MZ 125 stereo-binocular microscope (Leica Microsystems Ltd, St. Gallen, Switzerland) fitted with a digital camera (Q-imaging Micro Publisher 5.0 RTV; Zerene Systems LLC, Richland, WA, USA) at the Plant Protection Department, College of Food and Agriculture Sciences, King Saud University. Photo automontage was performed by Zerene stacker program version 1.04 (http:// zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker).
All insect materials are deposited in King Saud University Museum of Arthropods, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (KSMA).

Results
A total number of 142 insect species (four identified to the subspecies level and 18 identified only to the genus level) belonging to 51 families and representing seven orders are added to the fauna of Al-Baha Province by the present study.
Most species reported here are typical taxa of the Afrotropical Region rather than those associated with the Palearctic Region or the Eremic Zone. This affinity was slightly greater in Tihama (62%) than in Al-Sarah (58%). The study showed Palaearctic elements comprising 25% or less in both areas. There were a few Oriental elements (6% or less) ( Table 1).
All additions and corrections are presented in the following text.

Discussion
The Arabian Peninsula is considered by many authors to include three zoogeographical regions, the Afrotropical, the Palaearctic, and the Oriental (Hölzel 1998). Many authors include the south-western part of the Arabian Peninsula in the Afrotropical Region, but there appears to be no agreement as to the extent of this region of the Peninsula (El-Hawagry et al. 2013).
Al-Baha Province, like other areas in the south-western part of KSA, contains montane woodlands and evergreen shrub lands, with strong Afromontane affinities (Bussmann and Beck 1995), predominantly rich in Juniperus spp., Acacia spp., Olea spp., introduced cactus species and many other Afrotropical trees, including Nuxia oppositifolia, Maesa lanceolata and Celtis africana that grow in well-watered gullies, and mixed with some Mediterranean and northern temperate elements (Ghazanfar and Fisher 1998).
Considering the insect fauna of Al-Baha Province as listed by El-Hawagry et al. (2013) and these additional taxa listed herein, it is concluded that Al-Baha Province has an extraordinarily complex and interesting insect fauna. This may be attributed to its geographical position at the junction of the Afrotropical Region with its Afromontane vegetation and the Palaearctic Region with its Mediterranean and temperate floristic elements (Bussmann and Beck 1995;Hölzel 1998). Sharaf, Fisher, et al. (2014) studied the ants in the south-western mountains of KSA and showed that ants in this region have considerable affinities with the Afrotropical fauna. The insect species listed in this study also support the assumption of El-Hawagry et al. (2013) and Sharaf, Fisher, et al. (2014) that the insect fauna of Al-Baha Province is strongly related to the Afrotropical Region, rather than to the Palearctic Region or the Eremic Zone. These results emphasize the fact that parts of the Arabian Peninsula, including Al-Baha Province, should be included in the Afrotropical Region rather than in the Palaearctic Region or the Eremic Zone. Other studies have confirmed the Afrotropical faunal affinities in south-western mountains of the Arabian Peninsula (Eig 1938;Bolton 1994;Aldawood et al. 2011;Aldawood 2011, 2012;Sharaf et al. 2012aSharaf et al. , 2012bSharaf and Aldawood 2013;Sharaf, Fisher, et al. 2014).