Search

Thanks to the high diversity of ecosystems and habitats, South Africa harbours tremendous diversity of insects. The Kruger National Park, due to its position close to the border between two biogeographic regions and high heterogeneity of environmental conditions, represents an insufficiently studied hotspot of lepidopteran diversity. During our ecological research in the Kruger National Park, we collected abundant moth material, including several interesting faunistic records reported in this study.We reported 13 species of moths which had not yet been recorded in South Africa. In many cases, our records represented an important extension of the species’ known distribution, including two species (Ozarba gaedei and O. persinua) whose distribution ranges extended into the Zambezian biogeographic region. Such findings confirmed the poor regional knowledge of lepidopteran diversity.

Southern Africa hosts a high diversity of ecosystems and habitats with tremendous diversity of Lepidoptera. Although it belongs among most studied parts of the Afrotropics, the knowledge on diversity and distribution of south African moth fauna remains insufficient. To partly fill this gap, we surveyed macromoths by automatic light traps in seven localities in three relatively less sampled south African countries.We reported 14 species and one genus (Remigioides) of moths which have not yet been recorded in Namibia, Botswana, or Zimbabwe. Although none of these records broadened the known distribution of individual species to a new biogeographic region, they still fill important gaps in their distribution. Especially, the known distributional ranges of two species have been substantially extended, although still within the same biogeographic regions: ca. 800 km southwards for Remigioides remigina (Mabille, 1884), and ca. 600 km westwards for Haplopacha cinerea Aurivillius, 1905.