Novelties of Aeropedellus variegatus

The genus Aeropedellus (Hebard 1935) currently comprises 22 nominal species, whereas
all of them are typical elements of the Holarctic (Orthoptera Species File, accession date
12th November 2020). The largest part of these 22 species is occurring in the Asian
part of the Palearctic (20 species), while only two species are native to the Nearctic.
The region harboring most Aeropedellus species worldwide is Northern China and
Mongolia (15 species).
Only two species, Aeropedellus variegatus (Fischer von Waldheim, 1846) and Ae. volgensis
(Predtechenskii, 1928) are occurring in Europe. While the latter is a xerophilic
endemic of the steppe grasslands of the lower Volga basin (Bey-Bienko & Mishchenko
1951), Ae. variegatus has the widest distribution of all palearctic Aeropedellus species.
As such, Ae. variegatus occurs from Northeastern Russia to Western Europe (Ebner
1951). Ebner (1951) critically evaluated the distribution of Ae. variegatus and found that
the species occupies a more diverse set of habitats in its Northern distribution than
would be expected for a purely arcto-boreal species. Given this, he concluded that the
attribute „arcto-boreal distribution“ largely oversimplifies the species‘ complex ecology
and distribution in Asia, and he emphasized that Ae. variegatus has very strong ties
to the xeric steppes of Asia. The species’ European distribution, on the other hand,
reflects a classic arctic-alpine disjunction pattern (Schm itt et al. 2010).