Anthocharis gruneri gruneri Herrich-Schäffer, new for the Greek islands
(Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea: Pieridae)

The Gruner’s Orange Tip, Anthocharis gruneri gruneri Herrich-Schäffer, [1851], occurs locally in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The known range here comprises: Albania (Rebel & Zerny, 1931: 67), Macedonia (Jaksic, 1988: 58: map 43; Schaider & Jaksic, 1989: map 47), Greece (Pamperis, 1997: 65) and Bulgaria (Abadjiev, 1992: 43). In Europe it has also been recorded for Hungary (a single specimen) (Bálint & Janáky, 1989: 229—230; Bálint, 1991: 21).

When studying the rich butterfly collection of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Sofia, a small series of Anthocharis gruneri drew my attention. The specimens were collected by N. Karnozickij on the Island of Thássos in 1943. The localities and material examined are as follows: (1) Thássos (Limen) (UTM grid reference 35TLF01): 25.IV.[1]943 — 1 male; 27.IV.[1]943 — 1 female; 30.IV.[1]943 — 1 female; (2) Limenaria (UTM grid reference 35TKF90): 30.IV.[1]943 — 5 males; all N. Karnozickij leg. (see also Fig. 1). It should be noted that in the period of 1942—1944 many expeditions for collecting zoological, botanical, geological and other materials were organised by some Bulgarian institutions. N. Karnozickij himself visited Greek Aegean Coast and the Island of Thássos in 1942—1943 as a member of an expedition organised by the NMNH and The Sea Biological Station, Varna. Zoological results (concerning Coleoptera) were published subsequently (Karnozickij, 1959) but, unfortunately, nothing about Lepidoptera appeared.

After this unusual finding an extensive literature search has been carried out in order to find some published record about A. gruneri on Thássos. The only result was that the species has remained unrecorded for the Greek islands for a long time (cf Tolman, 1997: 49: ‘not reported from... Greek islands’) and as far as the Island of Thássos is concerned it is really absent in the modern faunal lists (Olivier, 1987; Littler, 1991).

Here the species is reported as new for the Island of Thássos (and even for the Greek islands as a whole).


REFERENCES

Abadjiev, S. (1992): Butterflies of Bulgaria, Part 1, Papilionidae & Pieridae. Veren Publishers, Sofia, 91 pp.
Bálint, Z. (1991): Conservation of Butterflies in Hungary. — Oedippus 3: 5—36.
Bálint, Z. & I. Janáky (1989): Nappalilepke-jegyzetek. [Notes on Rhopalocera (Lepidoptera)]. — Folia ent. hung. 50: 229—232.
Jaksic, P. (1988): Privremene karte rasprostranjenosti dnevnih leptira Jugoslavije (Lepidoptera, Rhopalocera). Jugoslavensko entomolosko drustvo, Posebna izdanja 1: 214 pp.
Karnozickij, N. (1959): Materialien zur Koleopteren-Fauna der Ägäischen Küste und Insel Thasos. — Izv. zool. Inst. Sof. 8: 237—253. (In Bulgarian; summary in German).
Littler, E. A. (1991): Autumn and Spring Butterflies of Thássos (Lepidoptera: Hesperioidea & Papilionoidea). — Phegea 19 (1): 25—28.
Olivier, A. (1987): Catalogue of the butterflies of the Greek islands in the collection of the Instituut voor Taxonomische Zoölogie (Zoölogisch Museum) Amsterdam (Lepidoptera: Hesperioidea & Papilionoidea). — Phegea 15 (2): 77—88, (3): 165—170.
Pamperis, L. N. (1997): The Butterflies of Greece. Bastas-Plessas Graphic Arts S. A., Athens, 559 pp.
Rebel, H. & H. Zerny (1931): Die Lepidopterenfauna Albaniens (Mit Berücksichtigung der Nachbargebiete). — Denkschr. Akad. Wiss. Wien 103: 37—161, 1 Taf., 1 Karte.
Schaider, P. & P. Jaksic (1989): Die Tagfalter von jugoslawisch Mazedonien. Diurna (Rhopalocera und Hesperiidae). Selbstverlag Paul Schaider, München, 82 pp., 46 Taf., 199 Verbreitungskarten.
Tolman, T. (1997): Butterflies of Britain & Europe. Harper Collins Publishers, London — Glasgow — New York — Sydney — Auckland — Toronto — Johannesburg, 320 pp., A, B + 104 Pls.