Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 99. (Budapest 2007)

Sziráki, Gy.: Presence of the subgenus Xeroconiopteryx Meinander, 1972 in Hungary (Neuroptera: Coniopterygidae)

Later it was reported from many parts of Mongolia (MEINANDER 1972fr), from Kazakhstan (ZAKHARENKO 1988), China (LlU&YANG 1998), and Yemen (SZIRÁKI & VAN HARTEN 2006), but not from Europe, or from the extraEuropean regions of the Mediterranean. It is worth mentioning that all of the coniopterygids with brachypterous female live on islands with a windy climate, or in "ecological islands" of arid regions. Because of the certainly very reduced dispersal power of C. kinali (with brachypterous female), it seems to be highly probable that after the last glacial period this insect immigrated into the Carpathian Basin not from Central or Southwest Asia (where the other known species of the C. mongolica group, with more plesiomorphic features live), but from the Balkan Peninsula. It may be supposed that in a dry and warm period (perhaps in the late Pliocene, or early Pleistocene) the full-winged ancestor of C. kinali lived in a larger part of Eurasia. Later on - because of the alterations in the climate - a part of its area segregated, and when the suitable habitats became island-like, the shortening of forewing, and the almost entire loss of hindwing occurred in the females. In the glacial periods of the Pleistocene the more southern slopes of some hills and the lower mountains of the Balkan Peninsula surely offered suitable habitats for such xerophilous insects as the Xeroconiopteryx species. Besides, there is another brachypterous Coniopteryx species, namely Coniopteryx diptera MEINANDER, 1971 (male unknown), described from Mongolia, but it does not belong to the subgenus Xeroconiopteryx as its gonapophyses laterales are separated sclerites, while these are fused in the Xeroconiopteryx species. The C. orba group (SZIRÁKI 2005), to which C. (X.) platyarcus belongs, has so far been known to be distributed in the arid and semiarid territories of Africa (from South Africa to Morocco), in the Arabian Peninsula and in Iran. Two of the species of this group, C. (X.) dentifera MEINANDER, 1983 and C. (X. ) mucrogonarcuata MEINANDER, 1979, were already known to have a large area (SZIRÁKI & VAN HARTEN 2006). Now it is clear that C. (X.) platyarcus has a very large area, too. It is highly probable that this species occurs not only in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) and in the Carpathian Basin (Hungary), but surely also in some of the regions between these geographical units being very far from each other. It seems to be probable that specimens of C. (X.) platyarcus will be found later in some localities of the Balkan Peninsula or Anatolia.