First record of the soldier fly genus Beris Latreille (Diptera, Stratiomyidae) from Korea, with designation of two new synonyms

Background The soldier fly subfamily Beridinae in the family Stratiomyidae contains approximately 280 known species, these being distributed across nearly all biogeographical regions with the exception of the polar regions. On the Korean Peninsula, the species diversity of this subfamily has been poorly examined to date, as is reflected in the National species list of Korea by the National Institute of Biological Resources. New information In this paper, the soldier fly genus Beris Latreille is reported for the first time from Korea, based on observations of the following three species: B. fuscipes Meigen, 1820, B. hildebrandtae Pleske, 1930 and B. hirotui Ôuchi, 1943. Additionally, the authors propose two nomenclatural acts: 1) B. angustifacies Nagatomi and Tanaka, 1972 syn. nov. = B. hildebrandtae Pleske, 1930; 2) B. liaoningana Cui, Li and Yang, 2010 syn. nov. = B. hildebrandtae Pleske, 1930. The authors also provide an identification key, descriptions, photographs and distributional notes on these Korean species.