36 Received: 13 Mar. 2021; Accepted by Renato S. Capellari: 30 Nov. 2021; published: 10 Dec. 2021 J. Insect Biodiversity 029 (2): 036–043 https://www.mapress.com/j/jib Copyright © 2021 Magnolia Press Article J. Insect Biodiversity ISSN 2538-1318 (print edition) ISSN 2147-7612 (online edition) https://doi.org/10.12976/jib/2021.29.2.2 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:C4E12D6D-1806-4959-A27E-22597512FF63 Notes on the genus Xylota Meigen (Diptera: Syrphidae) from Pakistan MUHAMMAD ASGHAR HASSAN 1,6* , ANJUM SHEHZAD 2,7 , SALEEM JAFFAR 3,8 , MUHAMMAD QASIM 4,9 & DILAWAR ABBAS 5,10 1 Department of Entomology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China. 2 National Insect Museum, National Agriculture Research Centre, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan. 3 Department of Entomology, South China Agriculture University, Guangzhou 510642, China. 4 Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Kohsar University Murree, 47150, Punjab, Pakistan. 5 Department of Entomology, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan. 6 � kakojan112@gmail.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2590-5781 7 � nim.anjum@gmail.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0531-7352 8 � salemjaffar@stu.scau.edu.cn; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7664-7869 9 � mqasim@kum.edu.pk; qasimagri@yahoo.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4322-5221 10 � dilawar72@yahoo.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4189-5627 * Corresponding author Abstract The genus Xylota Meigen is revised from Pakistan and a key to the known species is presented for the first time. Xylota coquilletti Hervé-Bazin, 1914, and X. nursei Brunetti, 1923 are newly recorded for Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. Of these, the former species is a new record for Pakistan. Brief taxonomic notes with diagnostic characters, digital photographs of dorsal and lateral habitus and the distribution map of both these two species are presented. Key words: Azad Kashmir, Eristalinae, Saprophagous, South Asia, Xylotina Introduction Over the past two decades, the hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) have been one of the most studied among all major groups of true flies systematics in Pakistan (see references in Arif 2001; Ghorpadé & Shehzad 2013; Shehzad et al. 2017; Hassan et al. 2018a, b), yet the major part of the country remains poorly-sampled. Hence a more realistic knowledge on diversity remains obscured, particularly for the southern and southwestern areas. However, as a result of ongoing studies on the hover fly fauna of Pakistan, a total of 83 species and 43 genera are currently known; the greatest diversity of the fauna lies in the northern (Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa & Islamabad Capital) and northeastern (Punjab) areas, but surprisingly low in the southern (Sindh), and southwestern (Baluchistan) territories (Ghorpadé & Shehzad 2013; Shehzad et al. 2017; Hassan et al. 2018a, b, 2019, 2020a, b, 2021). Hover flies of the genus Xylota Meigen, 1822 are among the largest taxa in the subtribe Xylotina with more than 130 species known from all zoogeographical regions (Hippa 1968, 1974, 1978; Pape and Thompson 2013). Their larvae are saprophagous in nature and associated with decaying hardwood (Rotheray & Gilbert 2011; van Veen 2010). Adult flies rarely visit flowers, instead they feed on pollen grains that have fallen onto leaves and typically move in jerky zig-zag motion, and flit rapidly from leaf to leaf (Rotheray & Gilbert 2011; van Veen 2004). In Pakistan, this rarely collected hoverfly genus is represented by only a single species: Xylota nursei Brunetti, 1923, originally described from India and later reported from Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2001; Azad Kashmir in the present study) (see the distributional map in Fig. 4). Here, we report X. coquilletti Hervé-Bazin, 1914 for the first time from Pakistan and update the distributional ranges of both the species for Pakistan and its neighboring countries. A detailed discussion on the nomenclature of X. coquilletti has been provided by Mutin & Ichige (2004) and Jeong & Han (2019). In addition, the genus Xylota Meigen is recorded for the first time from Azad Kashmir. Based on the distributional data of X. nursei and X. coquilletti, both are known from the northern parts in Pakistan, the transitional