oa First record of Meloe coelatus Reiche, 1857 (Coleoptera: Meloidae) for Qatar

Blister beetles of the genus Meloe Linnaeus, 1758, are widely distributed in temperate areas. However, their presence in arid environments is often overlooked. This is certainly true for Qatar. According to the Catalogue of Palaearctic Coleoptera (Bologna in Löbl & Smetana, 2008) there is not a single record for the genus Meloe in Qatar, although the genus is well represented in other areas of the Arabian Peninsula. Meloe coelatus is a rare species, infrequently found, distributed in a wide area of Northern Africa (from the Canary Islands to Tunisia) and in Western Asia (from Sinai Peninsula to Iran). Most of the reports correspond to isolated data; therefore, there are no records for many countries where the species might be present. We report here the discovery of a population of Meloe coelatus in northern Qatar that bridges the current geographic gap in the known distribution of the species, from Saudi Arabia to Iran. These findings suggest that the blister beetle (Coleoptera of the family Meloidae) fauna of Qatar, might be underestimated. A thorough field survey is recommended in order to document the presence of other species of this family, which was considered of medical relevance in past times.