Isophya modesta rossica Bey-Bienko, 1954

Dragan P. Chobanov, Beata Grzywacz, Ionuţ Ş. Iorgu, Battal Cιplak, Maya B. Ilieva & Elżbieta Warchałowska-Śliwa, 2013, Review of the Balkan Isophya (Orthoptera: Phaneropteridae) with particular emphasis on the Isophya modesta group and remarks on the systematics of the genus based on morphological and acoustic data, Zootaxa 3658 (1), pp. 1-81 : 33

Isophya modesta rossica Bey-Bienko, 1954

Isophya rossica Bey-Bienko : Bey-Bienko 1954 (sp.n.).

Isophya modesta rossica Bey-Bienko : Orci and Heller 2004 (stat.n.).

Morphological description: see the references above; Harz 1969; Heller et al. 2004. Bioacoustics: Orci and Heller 2004.

Diagnosis: This subspecies was described by Bey-Bienko (1954) on the basis of subtle morphological differences (Orci and Heller 2004), including stronger CuP vein. It is hardly recognisable from the nominate subspecies both using morphology and male calling song. The only stable difference seems to be the timing of the female response to the male calling song (Orci and Heller 2004), yet, the song of I. m. modesta was compared only with older literature data (Zhantiev and Korsunovskaya 1986) for I. m. rossica and thus the differences observed may be due to incomplete data for the female answer gathered by Zhantiev and Korsunovskaya (1986). Therefore, the case may concern synonymy of I. m. rossica with the nominate subspecies.

Distribution and phenology: Known from Northeastern Ukraine and the neighbouring territory of Russia (the region of Kursk). Inhabits steppe associations and forest meadows in the lowland and hilly terrains. Nymphs—IV– VI, imago—VI–VIII.

3.5. Complex Isophya rhodopensis

Four similar taxa were described from the Rila-Rhodope Mountain group in Bulgaria and Greece, which distinction is problematic (Chobanov 2009a) and which distributional ranges are unclear (e.g. Willemse and Willemse 2008: note on p. 18). These are I. rhodopensis , I. leonorae , I. kisi and I. petkovi . The transitions and great similarities between them in morphology, bioacoustics (see below), karyology (Warchałowska-Śliwa et al. 2008), as well as the intraspecific genetic variation (Grzywacz and Warchałowska-Śliwa 2008; Grzywacz-Gibała et al. 2010) does not allow their definitive distinction as species. Furthermore, a clinal transition in morphology and song characters was observed during the present study between different populations (mostly in West-East direction) resembling a case of ring species. However, the close approximation of the populations and the low differentiation, allows us to regard all the studied populations as belonging to one variable species with three subspecies.