Sphingidae: Esfíngidos de Argentina. Hawkmoths of Argentina.

MORÉ MARCELA, KITCHING IAN JAMES Y COCUCCI ANDREA ARÍSTIDES

Literature of Latin America

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2005 p. 288

950-9725-64-1

  Hawkmoths are familiar even to non-specialists because of the considerable size of the adults and their attraction to artificial light sources. For the more acquainted observer, hawkmoths draw attention by the swift night flight of their adults drinking nectar from flowers, and by the great size their voracious leaf-eating larvae can reach. For this reason, Sphingidae is usually one of the first insect families recorded in faunal inventories and it is quite common for any entomological collection, however small, to have records of this family. The first checklist of the hawkmoth species present in Argentina was published in the “Atlas de la Description physique de la République Argentine…” by Burmeister (1878), who cited a total of 30 species. Later works by Schreiter (1926), “Sphingidae. Estudio sobre las especies tucumanas…”, and Orfila (1933), “Catálogo sistemático de los Sphingidae (Lep.)”, increased this number to 71 species. Other comprehensive and classic works referring to hawkmoths species present in this country are the monumental monograph, “A revision of the lepidopterous family Sphingidae”, by Rothschild and Jordan (1903), and the biogeographical summary “Dispersal centres of Sphingidae (Lepidoptera) in the Neotropical region” by Schreiber (1978).  Orfila’s checklist (1933) represented an important step from previous checklists of Argentinian Sphingidae and is still the only comprehensive reference work for the country. However, it is now outdated and requires revision in the light of changes in our understanding of species limits and nomenclature, as summarized by Kitching and Cadiou (2000), as well as new species records for Argentina.  The present work collates and updates published and unpublished information from many sources that are sometimes difficult to get to, and makes it accessible to both an amateur and a specialized readership. The original need for the present checklist arose from the difficulty encountered by two of us, A. A. Cocucci and M. Moré, when trying to identify adult hawkmoths drinking nectar from the flowers of a wide variety of native plants in Argentina. This work is based on the study of specimens captured in Argentina, which are deposited in various local entomological collections, and in The Natural History Museum, London (United Kingdom). In addition, during the past five years (2000-2004), we undertook sampling and observation of adults by means of light trapping at more than 50 localities in Argentina. We also benefitted from the invaluable and friendly contributions of several collectors, as mentioned in the Acknowledgements below. From this need and work, the present illustrated checklist of the hawkmoths of Argentina was born. We list data for almost 3000 records of 106 species. Thus, we have added a further 35 species to the Argentinian inventory. Adults of each species are illustrated in colour and their geographical distributions in New World mapped. Identification keys are provided to species of the most critical genera. We hope that this checklist will serve to stimulate further biological and ecological studies of this fascinating group of moths, about which there is still so much to learn.