Melitaea (Mellicta) aurelia centralasiae Wnukowsky, 1929

Kosterin, Oleg E., 2023, Early summer aspect of butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Republic of Khakassia as examined in 2000, with some additional data, Amurian Zoological Journal XV (2), pp. 325-354 : 346

Melitaea (Mellicta) aurelia centralasiae Wnukowsky, 1929

Specimens of Mellitaea ( Mellicta ) sp.: 1\NNE Parnaya, 3♂, 2♀; 2\NE Kopyovo, 7♂, 3♀; 3\ NNE Kopyovo, 1♂, 1♀; 4\WNW Shira, 1♂; 6\SE Efremkino, 4♂; 9\Terensug headwaters, 1♂; 10\Terensug, 1♂, 1♀; 12\Dzhabash, 1♂.

Visual registrations: 7\Sonskiy, few.

Remarks: Unfortunately, the collected specimens of the subgenus Mellicta Billberg, 1820

were not identified by the genitalia soon after capture and are unavai-lable at present. No doubt, most of them belonged to M. aurelia centralasiae (this taxonomical treatment follows Ivonin et al. 2013), which is most common species in the mea-dow steppe of the mountains of South Siberia, which is the ecological optimum of this taxon. Also most of the butterflies observed in the field had uneven colour of the UPS pale spots and somewhat expanded spots of the postdiscal rows, as usual in this taxon. However, it cannot be excluded that the collected series also contained two other expectable and quite common species, M. (Mellicta) athalia (Rottemburg, 1775) and/or M. (Mellicta) britomartis (Assmann, 1847) , so above I enumerate specimens as not identified to species.