Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 60. (Budapest 1968)

Kovács, L.: Data to the knowledge of Hungarian Macrolepidoptera III. New taxa from the subfamily Hadeninae

where the heating effects of insolation is moderated to some extent only by evaporation. We should yet add that it was not observed at elevations above 400 m. The conditions of its distribution in Hungary depend primarily on a suitable combination of the ecological factors as defined above. A witnessed by the qualitative data of the light-traps, the situation in this respect is the most favourable in the northwestern parts of the Transdanubia and generally in the northern confines of the country. Of the 1922 specimens collected by the light-traps, more than 66 per cent derive from the northwestern part of the Transdanubia. An exceeding number, 769 individuals, was caught there by the light-trap at Sopronhorpács, representing 42 per cent of the entire material captured by the traps. Eighteen per cent of the total yield falls on the light-traps functioning in the northeastern section of the Transdanubia, of which the trap at Baj excelled by 192 specimens. Twelve per cent falls yet on the northeastern regions, but the yield of the best trap there, the one at Kisvárda, was merely 97 exemplars. And it is merely 4 per cent of the total which was captured by the traps in the central and southern parts of Hungary, whilst the six traps operating in the south and southeast have not captured a single specimen. The new species was heretofore habitually regarded as a steppe-species. This should indubitably be ascribed to the early Hungarian data, since the first two specimens known from the region have been collected in the warm Plains, and in the two southernmost known localities of the country. This view can now hardly be defended. It becomes even less tenable if the coenological relationships of our home populations are examined. We have already seen that in the Plains, the true habitat of our steppe-species, the species occurs only sporadically in time and space, and its individual numbers are very low. Wherever the conditions of its proliferation are the most favourable, thus in the northwestern parts of the Transdanubia, the steppe-species are entirely absent, whereas there live a number of species exhibiting a decidedly montane character within our confines. Such are, for instance, Eilema depressa ESP., Lycophotia porphyrea SCHIFF., Amathes ditrapezium SCHIFF., Cerapteryx graminis L., Puengeleria capreolaria SCHIFF., and others in Sopronhorpács. In the northeast, the species coexists at Kisvárda with the following species, montane in the above meaning of the term, namely Eilema depressa ESP., Cerapteryx graminis L., Bombycia viminalis F., Dysstromacitratah.,Perizoma albulata SCHIFF., etc. Localities, where richer gozmanyi populations and one or two steppe-species (eg. Hadena silènes HB), occur together, are to be found only in the northeastern part of the Transdanubia, but this region represents already a transitional area of the two faunal elements in question. To sum up, one may state that the new species is not a steppe-species, but a Noctuid taxon preferring primarily wet meadows in open tracts of land. For its distribution in the Carpathian Basin, a plausible explanation might be inferred from the climatic evolvement of the present geological age. The last glacial period was followed by a gradually increasing rise in temperature, simultaneously with a diminishing content of aerial humidity above the ground, as well as the gradual desiccation of the soil. Before this process began, our home populations had indubitably found their conditional requirements more southwards, indeed, the centre of conditions favourable for their proliferation, with respect also to their requirements of heat, had been considerably farther to the south. Their present range represents therefore an advanced state of a gradual shifting to the north, caused by external circumstances. During this process, the southern populations gradually decreased in individual numbers. This was further aggravated