Ábrahám Levente (szerk.): Válogatott tanulmányok VII. - Natura Somogyiensis 22. (Kaposvár, 2012)

Ábrahám L.: "On the other hand, what is this Eastern aeschnoides?" Morton 1926 - an undescribed Palpares species from the Eastern Mediterranean (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae)

Abrahám L: "On the other hand, what is this Eastern aeschnoides?'

79

A couple of years after the publication of Kolbe (1884), the name of P. aeschnoides appeared again in the paper of McLachlan (1889) when investigating the fauna of the Strait of Gibraltar. In this work, McLachlan (1889) did not investigate the taxon P. aeschnoides (as "var. aeschnoides Iliig.") but he shed some light on the differences between P. hispanus and P libelloides from morphological and distributional point of view. He drew borderline of the area of P. libelloides from the southern parts of France to Syria. Unlike Kolbe (1884) he regarded the two valid species and gave a differential diagnosis between them. He also criticized Kolbe (1884) for reporting P. libelloides from Africa, which led to confusion about the distribution of this species. To make things worse he mixed up the morphological characters of P. libelloides and P. hispanus. McLahclan (1889) therefore emphasized that P. libelloides did not occur in South Africa. He also supposed that P. libelloides var. aeschnoides can be found in the north-east of Africa (a smaller form of P. libelloides from Egypt). This assumption was based on the figure (Fig. 12) of the beautifully illustrated monograph of Savigny (1805-1814) which shows a life- sized, habitus drawing with all its body parts (mandible and labial palps).

Fig. 12: Savigny’s (1805-1814) Figures from "Description de l'Égypte névroptérespar Vol 2.”