HYLES ZYGOPHYLLI (Ochsenheimer, 1808)

UK: Bean-caper Hawkmoth, D: Doppelblattschwärmer, RUS: Parnolistnikovyi Brazhnik, E: esfinge del frijol de las alcaparras

Sphinx zygophylli Ochsenheimer, 1808, Schmetterlinge Europa 2: 226.

Type locality: Southern Russia [Turkestan].

(Taxonomic note. In such a variable species, especially one which responds to local climatic conditions, the creation of separate taxa for pale individuals from the former Soviet Turkestan and Mongolia cannot be justified.)

[Further details on this species, as well as photos of all stages, can be found on Lepiforum.]


BIOGEOGRAPHICAL AFFILIATION

Holarctic; western Palaearctic region. Pleistocene refuge: Polycentric -- Turanoeremic and Mongoloeremic refugia.


ADULT DESCRIPTION AND VARIATION

Male Hyles zygophylli, Baygakum, Kazakhstan.

Wingspan: 60--75mm. Forewing yellowish brown with a narrow, yellowish white, median stripe running from base of inner margin to apex, from which one or two branches extend towards costa; wing margin yellowish. Forewing much narrower than in related species. Similar to some forms of Hyles livornica (Esper, 1780). Variable in both colour intensity and size of markings; specimens from drier areas tend to be paler, with more yellow coloration.


Female Hyles zygophylli, Almaty area, Kazakhstan, bred 2022, leg. Serge Yevdoshenko. Photo: © Tony Pittaway. Adult Hyles zygophylli, Akkuduk, Ustyurt Plateau, SW Kazakstan, 16-17.V.2008. Photo: © Pavel Gorbunov. Male Hyles zygophylli, Bakanas, Ili river, SE Kazakhstan, 9-10.v.2013. Photo: © Svyatoslav Knyazev.

ADULT BIOLOGY

Occurs on hot alkaline flats, sand-dunes and arid stony hillsides where Zygophyllum fabago (Syrian bean-caper) grows, as well as sparse riverine scrub in more arid areas.

The adults behave very like those of Smerinthus kindermannii, another typical arid zone species from the same region. In other words, males will often fly and pair during daylight, with the females usually pairing within 24 hours of emerging; the adults do not need to feed. Females emerge with large fully-formed eggs in them and start laying on the first night after pairing and, in captivity, will lay quite freely on the netting of the pairing cage.


Typical riverine habitat of Hyles zygophylli, Turpan area, Xinjiang, China. Photo: © Tony Pittaway. Typical open habitat of Hyles zygophylli, Caspian Sea littoral, Gobustan area, Azerbaijan. Photo: © Tony Pittaway. Typical habitat of Hyles zygophylli with Zygophyllum fabago, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 16.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina Typical habitat of Hyles zygophylli with Zygophyllum fabago, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 16.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina

FLIGHT-TIME

End of April to mid-May, July/August and sometimes up to September in two to four generations. In cooler mountainous areas, most are to be found during June/July, with a partial second generation in late September/October. In the Urmia region of Iran there can be up to four generations (Emami, Karimpour & Lotafalizadeh, 2021).


EARLY STAGES

OVUM: Larger than most species of Hyles, spherical (about 1.1 mm in diameter), milky blue-green. Laid on the underside of a leaf, hatching from two to five days later.


Egg of Hyles zygophylli, Almaty area, Kazakhstan, bred 2022, leg. Serge Yevdoshenko. Photo: © Tony Pittaway.

LARVA: Full-fed, 70--80mm. Polymorphic. Unfed first instar larvae are uniform pale greenish-yellow with a dark horn (Emami, Karimpour & Lotafalizadeh, 2021). Fully grown, primarily pale green or yellow, with a black reticulate pattern dorsally and laterally; ventro-lateral and lateral surface unmarked. A narrow yellow dorso-lateral band with small black-ringed yellow or white eye-spots of variable size. In some the head, dorsal line, horn and anal claspers are black; in others they are yellow or pale green. All forms have a yellow band beneath the orange or white spiracles.

On hatching, the larva takes up a position along the midrib on the lower surface of the leaf. During later stages, most feed fully exposed, clinging to a stem while avidly consuming leaves and flowers. From egg to pupa takes approximately 30 days.

Common between May and September, sometimes later (October) in hot localities. Mitroshina (1989) recorded densities of 83.3 larvae per 100 hostplants examined for northern Turkmenistan.


Third instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, Aral Karakum Desert, Kazakhstan. Photo: © Dmitry Shovkoon. Fourth instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, Aral Karakum Desert, Kazakhstan. Photo: © Dmitry Shovkoon. Fourth-instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 16.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina Part grown final instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, Aral Karakum Desert, Kazakhstan. Photo: © Dmitry Shovkoon. Part grown final instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, Aral Karakum Desert, Kazakhstan. Photo: © Dmitry Shovkoon. Part grown final instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, Aral Karakum Desert, Kazakhstan. Photo: © Dmitry Shovkoon. Fifth-instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 15.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina Fifth-instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 15.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina Fifth-instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 19.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina Fifth-instar larva of Hyles zygophylli on Zygophyllum fabago, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 20.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina Full-grown dark morph larva of Hyles zygophylli, Turkey. Photo: © E. A. Loeliger Full-grown dark morph larva of Hyles zygophylli, Almaty area, Kazakhstan, bred 2017. Photo: © Anna Hundsdörfer Full-grown yellow morph larva of Hyles zygophylli, Almaty area, Kazakhstan, bred 2017. Photo: © Anna Hundsdörfer

Major Hostplants. Usually Zygophyllum fabago. Other species of Zygophyllum are utilized locally, such as Zygophyllum oxianum (Mitroshina, 1989), Zygophyllum eichwaldii, and Zygophyllum rosowii Bunge (Toropov, Milko, Zhdanko & Evdoshenko, 2023).

Minor Hostplants. Possibly the flower-heads of Eremurus. Tribulus will be accepted as an alternative hostplant by most captive larvae, and may thus also be a wild host. Fagonia is another possibility.


Zygophyllum fabago, the main host of Hyles zygophylli, near Ararat City, Ararat region, Armenia, 16.vi.2021. Photo: © Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina

PUPA: 40--50mm. Light, sandy brown, with fine dark lines. In summer, this stage lasts no more than eighteen days. Overwinters as a pupa 2-6 cm down in the soil (Emami, Karimpour & Lotafalizadeh, 2021).


Pupa of Hyles zygophylli, Almaty area, Kazakhstan, bred 2022, leg. Serge Yevdoshenko. Photo: © Tony Pittaway.

PARASITOIDS

Chalcididae: Proconura barbara (Masi, 1929) - pupae; Tachinidae: Masicera sphingivora (Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830) and Tachina praeceps (Meigen, 1824). All were recorded from the Urmia region of Iran by Emami, Karimpour & Lotafalizadeh (2021).


DISTRIBUTION

Western Turkey (Danner, Eitschberger & Surholt, 1998), central and eastern Turkey (de Freina, 1979; de Freina, 2012; Koçak & Kemal, 2018), northern Syria, the Republic of Georgia (Didmanidze, Petrov & Zolotuhin, 2013), Armenia (Didmanidze, Petrov & Zolotuhin, 2013; Wąsala & Zamorski, 2015; Vyacheslav Ivonin & Yanina Ivonina, pers. comm. 2022) and Azerbaijan (Didmanidze, Petrov & Zolotuhin, 2013; Snegovaya & Petrov, 2021), Daghestan (Abdurahmanov, 1999), the lower Volga valley of Russia, eastern Transcaucasia (with its main stronghold in the low-lying areas around the Caspian Sea (Bieberstein, 1809; Eversmann, 1844)), northern Iran (Danner, Eitschberger & Surholt, 1998; Emami, Karimpour & Lotafalizadeh, 2021), Turkmenistan (Toropov, Milko, Zhdanko & Evdoshenko, 2023), most of Kazakhstan (Shovkoon, 2015), Uzbekistan (Kondratiev coll., NHMUK; Shermatov et al., 2021; Toropov, Milko, Zhdanko & Evdoshenko, 2023), Kyrgyzstan (Eitschberger & Lukhtanov, 1996; Korb, 2018; Toropov, Milko, Zhdanko & Evdoshenko, 2023), Tajikistan (Grum-Grshimailo, 1890), northern Afghanistan (Ebert, 1969), and western Xinjiang Province, China (Pittaway & Kitching, 2000).

There is one record of a vagrant from Croatia (a specimen in the Carnegie Museum, labelled 'Dalmatia' (Ian Kitching, pers. comm. 2005)). Via vagrants, this species may colonize Romania in the future, where Zygophyllum fabago has become quite widespread (König, 2003).

Extra-limital range. Northern and central Xinjiang Province, China (Pittaway & Kitching, 2000) east to Shaanxi Province (Eitschberger, 1999), and north to southern Mongolia (Derzhavets, 1977; Saldaitis & Ivinskis, 2006; Knyazev, Makhov, Matov & Yakovlev; 2020) and the Selenga River valley, Buryatia, Russia (Pascal Régnier, pers. comm. 2012).


OTHER SUBSPECIES

None.


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