Polistes (Polistes) biglumis

Polistes (Polistes) biglumis (Linnaeus, 1758) Literature records Blüthgen and Königsmann (1969). Remarks We have examined no specimens of this species from Iraq. This species is listed as present in Iraq in several recent sources (e.g., Castro and Dvořák 2010; Rafi et al. 2017); however, it has not been possible to find a source indicating a precise locality in Iraq. Castro and Dvořák (2010) indicate Blüthgen and Königsmann (1969) as the source of the presence of P. biglumis in Iraq; however, the latter authors only indicate the species as present in ‘Mesopotamien’, a name indicating a territory covering much of today’s Iraq but also large areas in Turkey, Syria, Iran and the extreme north of the Arabian Peninsula. Given the impossibility of clarifying the actual origin of the record published by Blüthgen and Königsmann (1969) and the uncertainty about the identity of the Middle Eastern specimens identified so far as P. biglumis (Schmid-Egger et al. 2017; C. Schmid-Egger, personal communication), the species is, for now, excluded from the fauna of Iraq.