Strigamia transsilvanica Verhoeff 1928

Strigamia transsilvanica (Verhoeff, 1928)

Nominal subspecies: S. transsilvanica arulensis (Verhoeff, 1935); S. transsilvanica carpathica (Verhoeff, 1935); S. transsilvanica franconia (Verhoeff, 1935); S. transsilvanica latzeli (Verhoeff, 1935); S. transsilvanica salisburgensis (Verhoeff, 1935); S. transsilvanica sellana (Verhoeff, 1935); S. transsilvanica styrica (Verhoeff, 1935).

References for morphology: Verhoeff 1928, 1935; Matic 1972; Folkmanová 1952; Kaczmarek 1979; Koren 1986; Stoev 2002; Bonato et al. 2005; Iorio 2005.

Taxonomic notes. Described originally as a species of Scolioplanes, it was cited under Strigamia following Jeekel (1964b), however with the epithet often misspelled by different authors as “ transsylvanica ”. It was recorded repeatedly by recent authors, but doubts on its taxonomic distinction with respect to S. crassipes have been advanced by Spelda (2005). A complex set of subspecies and varieties was introduced by Verhoeff (1935), however they were most often ignored by other authors, but doubts as to their validity were expressed explicitly only rarely (Minelli 1992) and they were listed explicitly as synonyms of S. transsilvanica only by Matic (1972).

Distribution: central-eastern Europe, westwards to the entire Alps, northwards almost to the Baltic region, eastwards to the entire Carpathians, southwards to mainland Greece. Published records from Sakhalin island, Japan and Taiwan are probably due to misidentification of a different species.