Interesting records of Lepidoptera in the taiga and tundra regions of Sweden 2002

This is the 9 super(th) report on interesting lepidoptera from the Swedish mountain range and adjacent areas. In northern Sweden spring and summer came extremely early this year. The weather remained warm from May to the end of June. Thereafter the weather became somewhat unstable for a fortnight. In mid July the heat returned except in the extreme north. The whole of August was warm and sunny throughout northern Sweden which gave one of the warmest summers ever recorded on these latitudes. Due to the early season most Lepidoptera species flew extremely early, before most lepidopterologists went there. This is presumably the reason why so few remarkable finds were made despite the generally favourable weather. From the Abisko region most of the resident species were found, but because the early flight period only few species were observed in numbers. Among the species found were: Hepialus fuscoargenteus, Pyrgus andromedae, Colias nastes, C. hecla, Clossiana chariclea, C. thore, C. improba, Euphydryas iduna, Agriades glandon, Psychophora sabinii, Syngrapha parilis, Xestia quieta and X. lorezi. On the Paeltsa mountain larval cases of Coleophora paeltsaella were found in fair numbers for the first time, all of them on Dryas octopetala. In this region larvae of Eupithecia fennoscandica were found on Viscaria alpina by several lepidopterologists. On the sunny coastline of the Gulf of Bothnia several exciting species were found: Elachista vonschantzi, Acompsia subpunctella, Eana argentana, Epermenia falciformis and Spaelotis clandestina. Presumably as a result of the recent warm summers, a number of species have expanded further north along the coastal regions eg: Cosmorhoe ocellata and Eupithecia linariata which were found for the first time as far north as the northern shore of Gulf of Bothnia. In the central part of the Swedish mountain range Agonopterix arctica and Oidaematophorus rogenhoferi were found indicating that there are also many of interesting species still to find in this region. In the southern part of the mountain range, Haerjedalen, the fauna is still suffering from previous bad seasons and many species like the Xestia:s, Hillia iris and Syngrapha diasema were still occurring in low numbers. Only a few species occurred in higher numbers than average, eg Chloroclysta citrata and C. latefasciata. Others, like Albulina orbitulus had a good year in the generous sunshine which rarely is offered in such an amount to the fauna of Haerjedalen.