''Atylotus agrestis'' is a species of

horse fly Horse flies and deer flies are true flies in the family Tabanidae in the insect Order (biology), order Diptera. The adults are often large and agile in flight. Only females bite land vertebrates, including humans, to hematophagy, obtain blood ...

in the family

Tabanidae Horse flies and deer flies are true flies in the family Tabanidae in the insect order Diptera. The adults are often large and agile in flight. Only females bite land vertebrates, including humans, to obtain blood. They prefer to fly in sunli ...

Distribution

Originally described as ''Tabanus agrestis'' in 1828 by

Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann (7 December 1770 – 31 December 1840) was a German physician, historian, naturalist and entomologist. He is best known for his studies of world Diptera, but he also studied Hymenoptera and Coleoptera, al ...

from a series of specimens collected in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. Widespread in Palearctic and Afrotropical realms. Presently widely distributed from Egypt and Cyprus westwards to Libya and Algeria, and eastwards through Saudi Arabia and Iraq to India, Sri Lanka, and China. In the last decades Atylotus agrestis continuously extended its distribution northwards: it recently became abundant in northeastern Algeria, from where it was absent in 1987, and since the late 1990’s it has been regularly recorded from the Sinai Peninsula, in Israel along the coastal plain and the Rift Valley, and a few years later it appeared in Lebanon and in Saudi Arabia. In Europe the species was first observed in

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

in 2015 and in the following years it was confirmed to be a stable element of the local fauna, the first record from Italy, the

Pantelleria Pantelleria (; ), known in ancient times as Cossyra or Cossura, is an Italian island and comune in the Strait of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, southwest of Sicily and east of the Tunisian coast. On clear days Tunisia is visible from the ...

island, was confirmed in 2017.

Blood feeding hosts and veterinary relevance

Known hosts in Europe and the Levant are horses, camels and men, in Africa—horses and cattle. In the Arabian Peninsula and Africa this species is an important vector for ''

Trypanosoma ''Trypanosoma'' is a genus of kinetoplastids (class Trypanosomatidae), a monophyletic group of unicellular parasitic flagellate protozoa. Trypanosoma is part of the phylum Euglenozoa. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek ''trypano-'' (b ...

'' parasites causing the disease called

surra Surra (from the Marathi language, Marathi ''sūra'', meaning the sound of heavy breathing through nostrils, of imitative origin) is a disease of vertebrate animals. The disease is caused by protozoan trypanosomes, specifically ''Trypanosoma e ...

. Surra is a major disease in camels, equines, cattle and dogs, in which it can often be fatal.

References

Insects described in 1828 Taxa named by Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann Tabanidae {{Tabanoidea-stub