Adscita geryon (Hübner, 1813)

Koren, Toni, 2021, Contribution to the Procridinae (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae) fauna of Croatia, Zootaxa 4950 (1), pp. 61-82 : 68-69

Adscita geryon (Hübner, 1813)

This species is distributed from the Iberian peninsula across central and southern Europe, Russia, Crimea and Turkey ( Naumann et al. 1999). As was stated by Šašić et al. (2016), historical records of this species in Croatia are rather scarce. The only exact locality, Bosiljevo, was given by Šašić et al. (2016). Rebel (1904) mentions it only for Dalmatia, a larger coastal region of Croatia, while Stauder (1921) mentions it from the coastal areas of Istria and Dalmatia. During this survey the species was recorded on three localities with eight collected specimens ( Fig. 5 ). These are the first recent records of A. geryon in Croatia after almost a century ( Stauder 1921) and the first ones with precise localities and collection dates. All three localities (two of them being very close one to another) are located within Lička Plješevica montane range at the border with Bosnia & Herzegovina. This is a very diverse area in terms of butterfly diversity ( Koren et al. 2020) and seemingly also for the Zygaenidae . This is a significant expanse of the known range in Croatia as the record from Bosiljevo is distanced about 140 km from Mt. Lička Plješevica. The discovered populations in Croatia are probably connected to the ones in Bosnia & Herzegovina. However, recent surveys on the Zygaenidae of the country are lacking so this cannot be proven.

A. geryion is also known from Bosnia and Herzegovina from where A. geryion orientalis (Alberti, 1938) has been described and the specimens from Croatia most probably belong to this subspecies. Such records have already been hypothesized in the recent work ( Šašić et al., 2016) when it was stated that A. geryion orientalis was described from the Bosnian Mountains (Makljen pass) but must occur in more parts of the Dinaric Alps. This has now been confirmed with this survey. Habitats on which A. geryion was recorded are large montane grasslands, which were once used for cattle grazing but are nowadays mostly abandoned. As the species was collected in several different years, it seems that the population is present and possibly numerous. Even after this survey, A. geryon belongs to the rarest Procridinae species in Croatia and additional efforts should be taken in order to map its distribution and asses its conservation status. Additional surveys are needed on other high mountains of Croatia, especially Velebit and Dinara in order to additionally explore the distribution range of this species.

Figures

FIGURE 5. Distribution of Adscita geryon in Croatia based on newly collected data and historical records.