The Witt Catalogue, Volume 6: A Taxonomic Atlas of the Eurasian and North African Noctuoidea. Noctuinae I

Összefoglaló

The sixth volume is the first covering the covers the Noctuinae. It contains 49 colour plates and 118 genitalia figures.

From the preface:
"With this book starts a new series of volumes of the Taxonomic Atlas, the treatment of one of the most diverse subfamilies of Noctuidae, and Noctuoidea, respectively: the subfamily Noctuinae. The authors of this part had several options, based on their revisional works during the last three decades, e.g. Diarsia, Dichagyris, Eugnorisma, Eugraphe, Rhyacia or even Euxoa. Our choice has fallen on Chersotis, since this medium-sized genus is nearly exclusively Eurasiatic and Palaearctic. Furthermore, the authors of this volume have recently published several papers on this genus, containing the description of numerous new species, mostly from Western and Central Asia, and a review of its species groups.

Thus, the main objective of this book is already a possibly complete presentation of this genus both in taxonomical and biogeographical respects. Since most Chersotis species are small or medium-sized moths with considerable individual and geographical variation, it was possible but also necessary to figure a larger number of specimens of most taxa, including valuable type materials from several large European collections, due to the friendly courtesy of our colleagues. Of course, we are proud that a significant part of these specimens belong to some large collections in Hungary; the details you can see in the type enumerations and also in the legends of the coloured plates, which follow the style of the previous volumes.

This volume is also based on a large number of genital slides, predominantly prepared by the authors. Although we already had hundreds of slides from the times of our earlier publications, these have been completed by a large number of new slides. The technique of photographic reproduction was also continuously improved, mostly by long experience of Gábor Ronkay and also by the kind helpfulness of our friends in the Natural History Museum Vienna and Zoological State Collection, Munich.

This first Noctuinae book will be followed in about the next two years by 2-3 further volumes, optionally from those genera, which already were mentioned above. The authors would like to expect that this book will be a worthy continuation of our Taxonomic Atlas series and hope that our work will meet the approval both of professional entomologists and of enthusiasts of this fascinating group of moths."