Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 59. (Budapest 1967)

Kovács, L.: Data to the knowledge of Hungarian Macrolepidoptera II. Comparative population studies on three arctiid species by the aid of light traps

only rarely and moderately extending onto the fore wing. It also happens that the colour of the fore and hind wings is different. The pattern of the home specimens is primarily characterized by the development of the velutinously brownish black elements. The spot of the base is rather big, the median stripe wide, the white wedge from the base penetrates it usually only to its middle, but the marginal stripe is the widest one, considerably narrowing the white zone before it. The marginal stripe is deeply indented by the white tooth, terminally with a number of shorter to longer branches upward and downward, revealing the traces of a reducing dividing line. One of its remnants can occasionally be observed in the apical field as a fine, white line. The margin of the hind wing is also generally wide, but the median white tooth is of a varying extense, sometimes deeply intruding, sometimes entirely absent. The width of the tooth is on the average 2—3 mm. As the rudimental traces imply, the dividing line had continued also on the hind wing, but now merely a small fraction of it can be observed below the costa, and eventually as a white dot in front of the inner margin. The alar expanse is rather varying, generally 30—32 mm, the extreme values being 26 and 34 mm, respectively. The specimens collected in Tarcal are dark beyond the average, and also smaller, their alar expanse being between 24—30 mm. Their brownish black stripes are invariably wide, the basic colour less pure. Their most conspicuous feature is the branch directed toward the costa and the inner margin respectively, of the termination of the white tooth penetrating into the outer stripe of the fore wing, being entirely absent or represented only by its beginning. The three specimens from Lower Austria and the one from Czechoslovakia in the collection of the Museum agree with the medium sized, medium dark home specimens ; it is therefore hardly dubitable that they all belong to the nominate form. The specimens representing the Tokaj population differ from all other ones. They stand much nearer to ssp. centralasiae BANG-HAAS, described from Central Asia, than either the figure in row f, Plate 6, of the Supplementary volume of the SEITZ work, or an exemplar from Aksu deposited in the BAETHA collection of our Museum. The final word should of course be said only after the examination of a copious Central Asian material. I should yet like to call attention to the following. There are also 8 specimens from South France (6 ex Digne, 2 ex Vance) in the collection of the Museum. Their marginal stripes are on the average narrower than those of the Central European ones, and even those with a medially divided stripe. The French specimens are further characterized by the pure or hardly obscure white basic colour. In our collection, they had been separated, together with the home exemplars with a divided median stripe, as ab. mediodivisa SPUL. However, since they deviate also from the Central European specimens with a divided stripe, there is hardly any doubt that we are dealing here with more than individual aberrations. In this case also, one should have ampler material to decide the problem. Summary 1. Surveys made by light traps, if they be continuous and the light traps cover the examined area in a suitable density, are eminently fit for the comparative studies, equally with respect to the faunistics, communities, phenology, systematics, etc., of the populations of photophilous insects.