Heliothis Ochsenheimer, 1816

Matov, Alexej, Zahiri, Reza & Holloway, Jeremy D., 2008, The Heliothinae of Iran (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), Zootaxa 1763, pp. 1-37 : 6

Genus Heliothis Ochsenheimer, 1816

Type species: Phalaena dipsacea Linnaeus, 1767 (Syst. Nat. (Ed. 12) 1: 856) by subsequent designation by Samouelle, 1819: 252.

Synonymy: Heliothisa Meigen, 1832 ; Heliotis Sodoffsky, 1837 ; Chloridea Duncan & [Westwood], 1841; Asphila Guenée, 1852; Heliocheilus Grote, 1865 ; Dorika Moore, 1881 ; Rhodosea Grote, 1883 ; Disocnemis Grote, 1883 ; Dysocnemis Grote, 1890 ; Neocleptria Hampson, 1903 ; Nubiothis Beck, 1996 ; Peltothis Beck, 1996 .

Heliothis viriplaca (Hufnagel, 1766)

Pl. 1, fig. 1; male genitalia Pl. 3, fig. 20; female genitalia Pl. 8, fig. 37.

Phalaena viriplaca Hufnagel, 1766 , Berlinisches Mag. 3 (4): 406 (TL.: [ Germany]: Berlin).

Synonymy: Phalaena (Noctua) dipsacea Linnaeus, 1767

References: Christoph 1873, 1877 ( Heliothis dipsaceus ); Schwingenschuss 1938; Barou 1967 ( Chloridea dipsacea ); Kalali 1976; Modarres Awal 1994, 1997 ( Chloridea viriplaca ); Zahedi 1983 ( Heliothis dipsacea ); Hacker & Kautt 1999); Hacker & Meineke 2001; Hacker 2001; Ebert & Hacker 2002 ( Heliothis viriplaca ).

Bionomics: Bivoltine, probably multivoltine (Hacker 2001), univoltine in Israel (Kravchenko et al. 2005). Moth in flight from March to September. The early stages have been described by Hampson (1903), Spuler (1908), Forster & Wohlfahrt (1971), Bretherton et al. (1979) and Skou (1991). The species flies by day as well as at night. The species inhabits steppe-like habitas, usually at medium altitude up to 2900 m. Larvae are polyphagous, feed on 70 species of herbaceous plants of 22 botanical families (prefer Caryophyllaceae , Fabaceae , Lamiaceae and Asteraceae ).

Distribution: West Palaearctic. Europe, North Africa, Near East, Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, south Siberia (including Transbaikalia), China and north India. – In Iran (Pl. 10, fig. 49) distributed almost everywhere except eastern and some south-eastern provinces.

Material examined: 351 specimens from provinces West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Ardebil, Guilan, Mazandaran, Golestan, Khorasan, Semnan, Tehran, Qazvin, Qom, Markazi, Zanjan, Kermanshah, Kordestan, Esfahan, Kohkiluyeh va Boyer-Ahmad, Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari, Lorestan, Fars and Kerman, collected between 10.III to 22.IX on elevations from 0 to 2900 m.