HYLES NICAEA SHELJUZKOI (Dublitzky, 1928)

GB: Greater Spurge Hawkmoth, F: Sphinx Nicéa, D: Riesenwolfsmilch-schwärmer, RU: Nitstskii Brazhnik, H: görög szender

Type locality: Turkestan [Kazakhstan], Wernyi [Almaty/Alma-Ata].

(Taxonomic note. Apart from size, this subspecies has no clear characters separating it from subsp. nicaea, so it may well be only a form. H. n. 'libanotica' is a large local form of subsp. sheljuzkoi from the Lebanon, Turkey and Iran, and certainly does not warrant subspecific status.)

BIOGEOGRAPHICAL AFFILIATION

Holarctic; western Palaearctic region. Pleistocene refuge: Polycentric -- Syrian, Iranian and Turkestan refugia.

ADULT DESCRIPTION AND VARIATION

Wingspan: 90--110mm. By far the largest subspecies of H. nicaea, but variable both in size and in the amount of dark speckling on the forewing, the most heavily dusted individuals being more common in Kazakhstan and China (Pittaway, pers. obs.). Some specimens even approach subsp. orientalis in the Transcaucasus region.

As with H. hippophaes, some specimens found above 2000m in Kurdistan and Iran may be considerably larger than normal.

ADULT BIOLOGY

Occurs on dry, stony slopes at high altitudes -- up to 2800m in the Pamirs and above 1300m in Jordan (Müller et al., 2005a).

FLIGHT-TIME

May, July/August and sometimes September, in two or three generations, the third always partial. In Jordan there is a peak in July (Müller et al., 2005a).

EARLY STAGES

OVUM: As subsp. nicaea.

LARVA: As subsp. castissima.

Hostplants. Herbaceous Euphorbia spp., with E. oxydonta recorded from Jordan (Müller et al., 2005a).

PUPA: 50--55mm. Larger than but otherwise identical to that of subsp. nicaea.

PARASITOIDS

None recorded.

DISTRIBUTION

Lebanon (Zerny, 1933; Ellison & Wiltshire, 1939), northern Israel (Müller et al., 2005b), western Jordan (Müller et al., 2005a), southern Turkey (Hariri, 1971), northern Iraq (Wiltshire, 1957), Iran, Turkmenistan (Dubatolov, [1999]), Uzbekistan (Danner, Eitschberger & Surholt, 1998), Kazakhstan (Dublitzky, 1984), Kyrgyzstan (Kondratiev coll., BM(NH)), the Pamirs (Derzhavets, 1984), Afghanistan (Daniel, 1971) and western Xinjiang Province, China (Pittaway, pers. obs.).

Extra-limital range. None.

OTHER SUBSPECIES

The Atlas mountains of northwest Africa as subsp. castissima. From southern Portugal and Spain across southern Europe to Turkey (including the Balearic Islands and south-western Bulgaria) as subsp. nicaea. The southern Crimean Peninsula (Ukraine) and western Transcaucasia as subsp. orientalis. Eastern Afghanistan (Ebert, 1969), north-west India (Kashmir) and China (Xizang Province/Tibet) as subsp. lathyrus (Walker, 1856).