Recent research by Vujić et al. (2021a) stated 234 species in total from genus Merodon (Diptera, Syrphidae), from which 17 species are still undescribed so far from the region of the Middle East and Central Asia. This region was recognized as one of the centers of diversity and endemism of the genus Merodon (Kaloveloni et al., 2015; Vujić et al., 2019; Likov et al., 2020; Vujić et al., 2021). The 17 species mentioned above are as follows: one species from spinitarsis species group (distributed in Israel and Turkey), one species from murorum species group (distributed in Iran), two species from aberrans species group (distributed in Iran, Israel and Lebanon), one species from clavipes species group (distributed in Iran), two species from avidus species group (distributed in Iran and Azerbaijan), one species from pruni species group (distributed in Israel and Palestina), five species from tarsatus species group (distributed in Iran, Turkmenistan, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan), two species from ottomanus species group (distributed in Iran and Turkey), one from caudatus species group (distributed in Israel), and one unplaced species (distributed in Pakistan). This contribution contains basic distributional data for these species and discussion about diversity of Merodon species in these regions.

References:

Kaloveloni, A., Tscheulin, T., Vujić, A., Radenković, S., Petanidou, T. (2015) Winners and losers of climate change for the genus Merodon (Diptera: Syrphidae) across the Balkan Peninsula. Ecological Modelling, 313, 201–211.

Likov, L., Vujić, A., Tubić, N.K., Đan, M., Veličković, N., Rojo, S., Perez-Banon, C., Veselić, S., Barkalov, A., Hayat, R., Radenković, S. (2020) Systematic position and composition of Merodon nigritarsis and M. avidus groups (Diptera, Syrphidae) with a description of four new hoverflies species. Contributions to Zoology, 89 (1), 74–125.

Vujić, A., Likov, L., Popov, S., Radenković, S., Hauser, M. (2021) Revision of the Merodon aurifer group (Diptera: Syrphidae) with new synonyms of M. testaceus Sack, 1913. Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology, 24 (4), 1301–1312.

Vujić, A., Radenković, S., Likov, L., Andrić, A., Gilasian, E., Barkalov, A. (2019) Two new enigmatic species of the genus Merodon Meigen (Diptera: Syrphidae) from the northeastern Middle East. Zootaxa, 4555 (2), 187–208.