Genus Heliothis Ochsenheimer, 1816

Type species: Phalaena dipsacea Linnaeus, 1767 (Syst. Nat. (Ed. 12) 1: 856) by subsequent designation by Samouelle, 1819: 252.

Synonymy: Heliothisa Meigen, 1832; Heliotis Sodoffsky, 1837; Chloridea Duncan & [Westwood], 1841; Asphila Guenée, 1852; Heliocheilus Grote, 1865; Dorika Moore, 1881; Rhodosea Grote, 1883; Disocnemis Grote, 1883; Dysocnemis Grote, 1890; Neocleptria Hampson, 1903; Nubiothis Beck, 1996; Peltothis Beck, 1996 .

Heliothis viriplaca (Hufnagel, 1766)

Pl. 1, fig. 1; male genitalia Pl. 3, fig. 20; female genitalia Pl. 8, fig. 37.

Phalaena viriplaca Hufnagel, 1766, Berlinisches Mag. 3 (4): 406 (TL.: [Germany]: Berlin).

Synonymy: Phalaena (Noctua) dipsacea Linnaeus, 1767

References: Christoph 1873, 1877 ( Heliothis dipsaceus); Schwingenschuss 1938; Barou 1967 ( Chloridea dipsacea); Kalali 1976; Modarres Awal 1994, 1997 ( Chloridea viriplaca); Zahedi 1983 ( Heliothis dipsacea); Hacker & Kautt 1999); Hacker & Meineke 2001; Hacker 2001; Ebert & Hacker 2002 ( Heliothis viriplaca).

Bionomics: Bivoltine, probably multivoltine (Hacker 2001), univoltine in Israel (Kravchenko et al. 2005). Moth in flight from March to September. The early stages have been described by Hampson (1903), Spuler (1908), Forster & Wohlfahrt (1971), Bretherton et al. (1979) and Skou (1991). The species flies by day as well as at night. The species inhabits steppe-like habitas, usually at medium altitude up to 2900 m. Larvae are polyphagous, feed on 70 species of herbaceous plants of 22 botanical families (prefer Caryophyllaceae, Fabaceae, Lamiaceae and Asteraceae).

Distribution: West Palaearctic. Europe, North Africa, Near East, Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, south Siberia (including Transbaikalia), China and north India. – In Iran (Pl. 10, fig. 49) distributed almost everywhere except eastern and some south-eastern provinces.

Material examined: 351 specimens from provinces West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Ardebil, Guilan, Mazandaran, Golestan, Khorasan, Semnan, Tehran, Qazvin, Qom, Markazi, Zanjan, Kermanshah, Kordestan, Esfahan, Kohkiluyeh va Boyer-Ahmad, Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari, Lorestan, Fars and Kerman, collected between 10.III to 22.IX on elevations from 0 to 2900 m.