Bibio hortulanus ( Linnaeus, 1758 )

Haenni, Jean-Paul, 2009, The Bibionidae (Diptera) of Sardinia, with description of two new species *, Zootaxa 2318, pp. 427-439 : 429

1. Bibio hortulanus ( Linnaeus, 1758)

Tipula hortulana Linnaeus, 1758: 588

Bibio siculus Loew, 1846: 344 syn. rev.

Bibio hortulanus L. s. str.: Duda 1930: 57

Bibio hortulanus L. var. siculus Loew : Duda 1930: 60

Bibio hortulanus L.: Krivosheina 1986: 322

Bibio siculus Loew : Krivosheina 1986: 325

Literature records. Cagliari prov., near Cagliari, mid April 1882 ( Costa 1883). Sardinia (without further data) ( Dahl et al. 1995; Skartveit 2004) [probably based on Costa (1883)].

Other records. Italy, Aosta Valley: St. Denis , 880m, 13.V.2006, 1 ♀, J.-P. Haenni leg. ( MHNN) . Italy, Lombardy: Como prov., Menaggio , 18-30.V.1891, 6 ♂♂, 14 ♀, Escher-Kündig leg. ( ETHZ) .

Chorotype. A probable Asiatic-European element, present at least in the whole W-Palaearctic region.

Italian distribution. Mainland Italy, Sicily, Sardinia ( Dahl et al. 1995). All of Italy ( Boselli 1928: 92), Piedmont ( Leonardi 1927; Boselli 1928), Trentino-Alto Adige ( Marcuzzi 1956; Hellrigl 1996; Skartveit & Thaler 2001; Vanin 2006), Venetia ( Sommaggio et al. 2004), Emilia-Romagna ( Leonardi 1927), Latium ( Krivosheina 1997; Rivosecchi & Di Luca 2001), Campania ( Leonardi 1927), Sicily ( Loew 1846), Aosta Valley, Lombardy (present paper).

Ecology. A common vernal species, especially abundant in traditional agricultural landscape.

Notes. The species is not represented in recent material from Sardinia (CNBFVR), but its very characteristic features make it unmistakable, especially females. Bibio siculus Loew has been considered as a separate species in recent catalogues ( Krivosheina 1986; Skartveit 2004), pending a study of the variability within the Bibio hortulanus complex. Variability is indeed important in southern Palaearctic forms, but the characters concerned are only colour of thorax and abdomen, and colour of pilosity, which are not reliable at the specific level within Bibio Geoffroy , as recently pointed out by Skartveit (2006). For this reason I here follow Duda (1930), who treated B. siculus (and other forms) as mere varieties of B. hortulanus , and I consider both names as synomyms: Bibio hortulanus ( Linnaeus, 1758) = Bibio siculus Loew, 1846: 344 syn. rev.