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)
80 Natura Somogyiensis During the Egyptian campaigns, Napoleon decided to take with him a corps of scholars in order to discover the natural and cultural treasures. Savigny (Marie Jules César Lelorgne de Savigny, 1777-1851) was an excellent illustrator working in the zoological section run by Geoffrey (Etienne Geoffrey St. Hilaire, 1772-1844). During the expedition he drew two big plates of the neuropteran species, but no description of the species was given, and only the orders were identified (Savigny 1805-1814). Several undescribed species were recorded by his artistic drawings which had been unknown to science until then. Among these are, for example, Libelloides ictericus (Charpentier, 1825), Bubopsis kamata (Klug in Ehrenberg, 1834), Nemoptera aegyptiaca Rambur, 1842, and Nophis teillardi Navás, 1912 etc. which were described only several years later. After the turn of the 20th century, Klapálek (1906) reported the name P. aeschnoides (Fig. 13.) from Enyusek (Enyusek Dagh Taurus) (now in SE Turkey) in a paper, in which he listed three Palpares species. He separated P. libelloides (as "P. libelluloides") from P. hispanus, but it is worthy of note, that he did not give the author name to the third taxon P. aeschnoides unlike in the case of the other two taxa the abbreviations of authors were given. Therefore, it can be concluded that Klapálek (1906) was aware of the existence of the eastern Mediterranean species different from the P. libelloides, but he identified it as P. aeschnoides, probably based on Hagen’s (1958) work. At the beginning of the 20th century, the name P. aeschnoides appeared in a study about the morphology of insects’ wings (Comstock 1918). The drawing illustrated the wing venation of a Palpares species. The occurrence of the species illustrated was not reported. "On the other hand, what is this Eastern aeschnoides?" - it is a question, first worded by Morton (1926), and published earlier on by McLachlan (1873, 1889) which seemed to be under debate by all the entomologists studying specimens from the Middle East. Morton (1926) investigated the ant-lion fauna of Palestine, and based on the results of McLachlan (1889), he realized that the specimen he studied did not belong to either P libelloides or P. hispanus. Being aware of this problem, he showed his specimen to Esben-Petersen, a prominent Danish neuropterologist of his age, who identified it as P hispanus. He also clarified that the species P. papilionoides (Klug in Ehenberg, 1834) reported from Palestine by Navás (1912) was also based on a false identification. However, the species Palpares chrysopterus Navás, 1910 described by Navás (1910) was not taken into consideration. From this time forth, the most extensive monographic coverage of the fauna of this area was presented by Hölzel (1972). Only some specimens of P. libelloides collected in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and Syria were available for Hölzel (1972) and among these, no specimens were found bearing the morphological characters of P. hispanus. Based on the research of Morton (1926), Hölzel (1972) assumed that P. aeschnoides, a variety of P. hispanus could be found in the Middle East. In the monograph of Aspöck et al. (1980, 2001), the species P. libelloides was regarded as an extremely polymorph taxon, and the validity of P. hispanus was questioned and Krivokhatsky (1998a) was not cited. In the faunistical work of Krivokhatsky (1998a, 2011), the name "P. aeschnoides (Illiger, 1807)" appeared as a valid species besides P. libelloides and P. hispanus. The drawings of the wings and the genitalia were illustrated (Fig. 14). In addition, Krivokhatsky (1998b) presented it as a valid taxon from Israel in his online database (ZIN database). In the Upper Silesian Museum (USMB Bytom, Poland), I found a specimen collected also in Israel identified as 1 female /"Israel Camp Ziouani en. Ziwan (Gollan hills) II1-IV. 1996 leg. R. Rosa /P. aeshnoides III. [sic!] det. Krivokhatsky " (Fig. 15).
