Calosoma imbricatum Klug, 1832

Assmann, Thorsten, Boutaud, Estève, Buse, Jörn, Drees, Claudia, Friedman, Ariel-Leib-Leonid, Hetzel, Andreas, Orbach, Eylon, Renan, Ittai, Reuter, Christoph & Wrase, David W., 2020, The Caterpillar Hunter Beetles Calosoma Weber (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in the southern Levant, Israel Journal of Entomology (Oxford, England) 50 (2), pp. 133-158 : 140-141

Calosoma imbricatum Klug, 1832

( Fig. 7)

Dispersal power: Macropterous, flight active.

Habitat: Unknown.

Phenology: Adults throughout the year in Africa south of Sahara, and in January– March in Egypt ( Alfieri 1976).

Material examined: Saudi Arabia: 2♂ 2♀ Riyadh Province, v.1982, K. O’Brien (CWGP, Wrase det.) .

Distribution range: From Cape Verde Islands to Central Asia ( Mongolia), southwards to South Africa ( FeliX 2009; Bruschi 2013; HÄckel 2017), also in Egypt west of Nile ( Alfieri 1976; Bruschi 2013).

Distribution in southern Levant: Sinai (El-Akkad et al. 1998). Ptashkovsky (2013) mentioned this species in the Upper Galilee, but we are unaware of any specimens of C. imbricatum from Israel, since no material has been found in the SMNHTAU, including the collection of the late Ptashkovsky, which was incorporated in the SMNHTAU.

Taxonomic notes: The species has two subspecies in the Palaearctic. The specimen from Djibouti ( Fig. 7A) belongs to the nominate subspecies, which occurs also in Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula and eastwards to Iran. The subspecies C. i. deserticola Semenov, 1897 occurs from the Southern Russian Plain through Kazakhstan ( Fig. 7B) and Turan ( Kryzanovskij et al. 1995) and to the northern regions of Iran ( Bruschi 2013). Both subspecies differ in the body size, coloration, proportions of the pronotum and elytra, the shape of the eyes, sculpture of the pronotum and elytra, etc. In Pakistan, a hybrid zone between both subspecies seems to occur (cf. Bruschi 2013). The specimens from Saudi Arabia are almost black (as deserticola ), but otherwise show the morphological characters of the nominate subspecies.