Hesperinus ninae Papp & Krivosheina, 2010

Kurina, Olavi, 2013, Hesperinusninae Papp & Krivosheina (Diptera: Hesperinidae) from Georgia: the second record of this peculiar species, Biodiversity Data Journal 1, pp. 1023-1023 : 1023

Hesperinus ninae Papp & Krivosheina, 2010

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordedBy: Olavi Kurina; individualCount: 12; sex: male; Location: country: Georgia; verbatimLocality: Saguramo north of Tbilisi; verbatimElevation: 915; verbatimLatitude: 41°53 ’04,3’’ N; verbatimLongitude: 44°46 ’46,5’’ E; Event: samplingProtocol: sweeping; eventDate: 15 May 2013; Record Level: institutionCode: EMY; collectionCode: IZBE

Taxon discussion

Hesperinus ninae (Figs 2, 3) was described from two male specimens collected in the 1960s from Krasnaya Polyana (Krasnodar Kray in Russian North Caucasus), but according to Papp & Krivosheina ( Papp and Krivosheina 2010) other material from the same collecting series had already been included in an overview by Mohrig et al. ( Mohrig et al. 1975: as Hesperinus imbecillus ).

Using the key by Papp ( Papp 2010), the studied specimens run well to Hesperinus ninae because of the elongated terminal flagellomere (Fig. 2c), wing length about 6 mm (Fig. 2b), considerably shorter and broader first flagellomere with specific setation (Fig. 2d), and gonostylus mediodorsally with a projecting lobe (Fig. 3c). Like the European Hesperinus imbecillus , the females of Hesperinus ninae are flightless. In spite, that there were no females included to the original description ( Papp and Krivosheina 2010), four of them from the same collecting series were studied by Mohrig et al. ( Mohrig et al. 1975, as Hesperinus imbecillus ). They figured a female with reduced wings ( Mohrig et al. 1975: fig. 1) and did not described any differences between Northern Caucasian and Central European material (see also discussion by Papp and Krivosheina 2010). The flightlessness has obviously been an adaptive response to unfavourable climatic conditions and has set further limits to dispersal. However, the current record is at quite a remote distance from the type locality, indicating that the species probably has a wide distribution in suitable habitats in the Caucasus.