O. Merkl szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 66. (Budapest, 2005)
The first known occurrences of Hyles vespertilio in Hungary About midnight on 7th June 2004 a worn female of H. vespertilio came to a 125 W mercury-vapour lamp at an abandoned limestone quarry at Fertőrákos (Fig. 3). The specimen was sitting on the ground at the edge of the lit area. Photographs were taken of this first Hungarian specimen (Fig. 2), which was then deposited in the Lepidoptera Collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum (locality: Hungary, Győr-Moson-Sopron County, Fertőrákos limestone; 47°43 , 53.371"N, 16°38'41.622"E; 07.VI.2004, leg.: SÁFIÁN, Sz., HADARICS, T.). At first it was thought that it represented a vagrant specimen carried by the wind into Hungary, since the locality is only about 1 km from the Austrian border. Nevertheless, a study of the biology and ecology of the species indicated that the climate of the locality was very similar to that of known sites farther south. The hills in the vicinity of the village of Fertőrákos (Fertő-melléki Hills) are southfacing, short grassed, open, rocky-steppes on a Miocene "lajta-limestone" foundation. Nowadays, only small patches of this natural plant community can be found; however, there are huge man-made open limestone flats around Fertőrákos due to previous limestone mining, which was started in the late Roman Age. These large white areas of pure limestone reflect solar radiation to such an extent that the area gets extremely hot in summer. The meso-climate of these limestone mines is probably much warmer than the surrounding areas, which are covered by soil and close vegetation. After these mines were abandoned they were colonised by plants but, probably due to good drainage and excessive summer heat, little soil developed for decades and only open grasslands were initially formed here. Many thermo-xerophilus plant species characteristic of limestone areas, like Buphthalmum salicifolium, Jurinea mollis, Sanguisorba minor are very common (KIRÁLY 2001 ). The pioneer species Chamaenerion dodonaei is also to be found in such habitats. In the faunal work on Hungarian Sphingidae cited above (VOJNITS et al. 1991), the foodplant of H. vespertilio (Epilobium dodonaei) is treated as a nonnative plant for Hungary. The possible reason for this mistake was probably that Hungarian floral works used to use the name Chamaenerion angustissimum (Soó & KÁRPÁTI 1968). To avoid further confusion it is worth noting that other synonyms for Ch. dodonaei were used in different works. The first faunal work on Lepidoptera by ABAFl-AlGNER ( 1907) used two names (Chamaenerium palustre Epilobium rosmarinifolium); and Chamaenerion palustre is used in the Iconographia of the plants of Central Europe (JÁVORKA & CSAPODY 1991). According to SIMON (2000), the current valid name of the foodplant is Chamaenerion dodonaei (VILLARS) HOLUB.
