Language: English
This is the first illustrated guide to the butterfly fauna of Turkmenistan, a country situated in the eastern part of the Mediterranean subregion of the Palaearctic and including diverse faunistic associations. It is here that the southern desert fauna of Asia Minor and Iran encounters the northern Central Asian desert fauna; on the Kopet Dagh mountain range one can find European and Central Asian species flying together. For certain species of Asia Minor, Kopet Dagh mountains is the extreme eastern limit of their range. On the other side, the western distribution limit of typical Central Asian and Afghan-Pakistani species goes along Kopet Dagh. The butterfly fauna of Turkmenistan includes numerous strictly local and endemic species and subspecies as well. The book contains information on distribution (a great body of information is published for the first time), imago flight period, a complete synonymy, data on the type material (partly figured on the plates) for 173 species and more than 250 species group taxa; for each species a distribution maps is given, all species (except of few rarest in Turkmenistan) are figured on the colour plates (upper and under side, 1053 figures in total). Furthermore, there are 10 plates of genitalia and some landscapes of Turkmenistan are figured on the dust jacket. The bibliography section consists of 294 entries.