The Phlebotomine sand-flies of West Pakistan (Diptera: Psychodidae)

Pakistan (Text-fig.1), including northern Kashmir, comprises the great alluvial plain of the Indus and its tributaries in Sind and West Punjab, the hills and plateaux south-west of Peshawar, and the high mountains and valleys of the north.The northern mountains radiate from the Pamirs and comprise parts of the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan ranges.South of the Himalayas the climate is tropical and is dominated by the rhythm of the monsoons, but the rainfall is low and much of the area is cold in winter.North of the Punjab there are intermittent wet days in summer, and forest begins at about 1400 metres.The Himalayas stand in the path of the monsoon, so that the Karakoram is part of the central Asian desert.In the Gilgit and Skardu areas the general arid conditions contrast with narrow valleys of streams fed by vast areas of melting snow.Weak depressions from the Mediterranean (Bharadwaj, 1961) cause light winter rains in the north and some of the Himalayan snowfall.The area is described in the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1907) and briefly by Schmid (1958).Prater (1965 : 21) indicates the plant zones, and Mani (1962), Lorimer (1939) and Maraini (1961) describe the western Himalayas and the country around Gilgit and Skardu respectively.METHODS Collecting.Sand-flies resting in houses were usually collected with a suction catcher, and some were taken by Mr. McDonald around Mir Muhammad in routine pyrethrum-spray catches of mosquitoes and on cattle.Most outdoor catches in 1963 were made with sticky traps.They consisted of pieces of paper about I0 X 16:5 cm.smeared with castor oil and supported by cleft sticks about 28 cm.long, and were placed before dusk near animal burrows, rock crevices and other likely places.Two hundred and fifty ml. of oil sufficed for about roo traps.Five hundred and forty were set, on 25 nights, and yielded 419 flies(from o to 2°6 per trap per locality-average 0-8), whereas the maximum on a single trap in Iran in June, 1960 (Lewis e¢ al., 1961) was 132.The low numbers in Pakistan were probably due partly to the preceding cold winter and, near Karachi, to wind.Some sand-flies were driven from termite hills with tobacco smoke and caught in a fine-mesh black net, and a few were taken in a Damasceno-type trap, but this is more suitable for forest country where it can be slung from trees.Preservation.Many specimens were preserved dry in vials or cardboard boxes, with tissue paper or cotton-wool to prevent shaking.Others were stranded in plastic vials and wetted with a few drops of gum-chloral mounting medium.Mounting.Dry specimens were put in tap water containing one per cent of domestic detergent (to wet them), which was heated to about 85° C. for four.minutes to remove bubbles.Specimens were roughly sorted according to external characters, including size, colour and, in the case of male Sergentomyza, the shape of the abdomen.Most of the flies were mounted in gum-chloral medium composed of distilled water (20 ml.), gum acacia (16 gm.), chloral hydrate (140 gm.), glycerol (12-6 gm.) and acetic acid (6:3 gm.), beneath circular cover-glasses I cm. in diameter and o-r mm.thick.The mounts were allowed to dry partially for a few months, or kept over silica gel D.