Muskovits József - György Zoltán - Ábrahám Levente (szerk.): Magyarország hangyadarazsai - Natura Somogyiensis 18. (Kaposvár, 2011)
Introduction
MAGYARORSZÁG HANGYADARAZSAI - VELVET ANTS OF HUNGARY (MUTILLIDAE) 101 Introduction Velvet ants (Mutillidae ) are a family of insects belonging to the order of Hymenoptera and within that to the Vespoidea superfamily of the Aculeata suborder. Velvet ants can be easily recognised. The apterous females of 3 to 20 mm (at most 25 mm) length appear to be rather setae, colourful ants. The older Hungarian term „pókhangya" (spider ant) was probably a mirror translation of the older German term „Spinnenameise", but was not entirely appropriate because velvet ants have nothing to do with spiders. Velvet ants occur in all zoogeographical regions, but the vast majority of them are found in tropical and subtropical areas. The family is divided into 10 subfamilies, 191 genera and so far 4230 species were described (LELEJ 2004), but their number probably exceeds 5000. About 170 species were found in Europe, in Hungary 31 species belonging to 5 subfamilies and 15 genera are known to occur. Some species have been described on the basis of male or female specimens alone. In most cases the males are so different from the females that only males and females caught in the act of copulation can be claimed to belong to the same species with certainty. It may be revealed in many cases that certain male and female specimens thought to be distinct species may belong to the same species, therefore the number of existing species may be lower than the actual number. The female specimens of Physetopoda daghestanica and Skorikovia pliginskiji and the male specimens of Dentilla curtiventris, Physetopoda sericeiceps, Smicromyrme nonveilleri and Smicromyrme triangularis are unknown. In our term for the frequency of occurrence, the „Common" ones are those species that have been found in more than 50 localities and/or more than 300 specimens have been collected. „Frequent" ones are those species that have been found on 21 to 50 localities and/or 101 to 300 specimens have been collected. „Rare" species have been found in 11 to 50 localities and/or in 20 to 100 specimens. „Very rare" species have been collected in less than 10 locations and/or fewer than 20 specimens have been caught. The material studied consists of some 8700 specimens deposited in the following collections: BTM = Natural History Museum of Bakony Mountains, Zirc (Dr. Csaba Kutasi) JZs = Zsolt Józan, Mernye (private collection) KFM = Kazinczy Ferenc Museum, Sátoraljaújhely (Gábor Hegyessy) MJ = Dr. József Muskovits, Budapest (private collection) MTM = Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest (Dr. Sándor Csősz) SMM = Somogy County Museum, Kaposvár (Dr. Levente Ábrahám) The identifications of velvet ants, the data processing and writing of the text, as well as the habitat photos were made by József Muskovits, the figures were drawn by Zoltán György, the photos from velvet ants were taken by Nikola Rahmé.
