Polia (Polia) subcontigua (Eversmann, 1852)

Varga, Zoltán, Ronkay, Gábor, Nagy, Jenő & Ronkay, László, 2020, Contribution To The Taxonomy And Phylogeny Of The Genus Polia Ochsenheimer, 1816 (Noctuidae, Noctuinae, Hadenini): Species Groups And Pairs In The Holarctic Subgenus Polia S. Str., Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 66 (1), pp. 35-67 : 49-50

Polia (Polia) subcontigua (Eversmann, 1852)

Hadena subcontigua Eversmann, 1852 , Bulletin de la Société Imperiale des Naturalistes de Moscou 25 (1): 155. Type-locality: [ Russia, Orenburgskaya obl.] “Spask.[oye]” “Jul[y]” (handwritten labels). Holotype: female, in coll. ZISP.

Taxonomic notes. This species is identical with the well-known P. altaica (Lederer, 1853) , including the f. monotona (Bang-Haas, 1912); the synonymy was established by VARGA et al. (2017). Most populations of the species are polymorphic with variable proportion of contrastingly patterned (“typical”) vs. concolorous (“ monotona ”) forms without a clear geographical trend on the most part of the range with the exception of the Himalayan region where the dark fuscous form predominate ( BOURSIN 1964). The male genital capsule is nearly symmetrical with short saccular extensions but with a group of strong bristles on the left side only. Vesica is tubular, triple helicoidal, without any stripe of spinulose cornuti.

The name subcontigua was forgotten until the recent times, and the species was generally cited under the name altaica . This polymorphic species has a wide but scattered range, and is distributed from the southern Urals to Nepal on the one side and to Mongolia on the other.