Expansion of Crocothemis erythraea in Ukraine

A noticeable expansion of some Mediterranean species takes place in Europe during last several decades and this data are related to climatic eff ects clearly. Th e present work is a review of literature and original data on distribution of C. erythraea in Ukraine. In the beginning and middle of XX century in Ukraine the Scarlet Dragonfl y was observed in southern area at Dnieper valley, in outmost southwest at Danube delta at the west of Ukraine in Transcarpathian and Forecarpathian. Next, this species was registered at the foothills of Carpathian Mountains. During last three decades C. erythraea was also recorded at the north and east (central regions, eastern, northern and northeastern areas). Since 2000 new points have been registered in Odessa, Kherson,Vinnytsya, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kyiv administrative regions and in Crimea.


Introduction
Crocothemis erythraea is Palaearctic-Afrotropical-Oriental species, which distributed in Europe, Transcaucasus, Near East, Mid-and Central Asia, Northern and Tropical Africa, Madagascar and Northwestern India.In Western Palearctic the Scarlet Dragonfl y occurs in the south and middle parts, reaching the Netherlands (Hermans and Gubbels 1997), Belgium (Knijf 2003), south of England (Jones 1996;Butler and Butler 1998;Parr 2001Parr , 2002)).Th e map of distribution C. erythraea in Western Palearctic region was made due to analysis of recent literature (fi g. 1).In Europe it was found in Austria (Schweiger 1983;Chwala 1990;Raab et al. 1996;Ehmann 1998), Bulgaria A noticeable expansion of some Mediterranean Odonata species like C. erythraea occurred in Europe, beginning around 1980.Because the northward spread of these species is especially well documented, it seems worthwhile trying to correlate it with detailed climatic data now at hand (Ott 2001;Dijkstra, 2006).Scarlet Dragonfl y colonizes the new biotopes mostly on initial stages of succession.Investigators registered the increasing of population sizes in higher altitudes as well.For example, in Germany C. erythraea have spread over several hundreds kilometers to the north and about 400 meters in altitude for last two decades (Ott 2001).Investigators consider this phenomenon as consequence of global climatic changed and propose C. erythraea as good indicator species.

Material and methods
Th e present work is a review of literature data on distribution of C. erythraea in Ukraine.Author use the data of own collection and observation during 1999-2009 and data of collection of colleagues entomologists which were kindly lent for author as well.

Results and discussion
In the beginning and middle of XX century in Ukraine the Scarlet Dragonfl y was observed in southern area at Dnieper valley (Artobolevs'ky 1929;Brauner 1902), at Danube delta (Brauner 1903;Bezvali 1932) and in Western Ukraine in Transcarpathian and Forecarpathian (St. Quentin 1933;Grabar 1933) andCrimea (Artobolevsky 1929b;Pliginsky 1913).Pavlyuk (1990) collected this species in 1968 and 1973 at the foothills of Carpathian Mountains.During last two decades C. erythraea was recorded in Ukraine in outermost southwest at Danube delta (Gorb and Ermolrenko 1996;Dyatlova 2005Dyatlova , 2006)), in Crimea peninsula (Kiseleva and Vershitsky 1998;Prokopov 2003), in the west (Vizslán and Huber, 2001) and towards to north and east, namely central regions (Barsov 1987), eastern (Martynov and Martynov 2003), northern (Tytar 2003;Matushkina 2006) and northeastern regions (Khrokalo 2000).In 2000-2007 new points were registered in Vinnytsya, Chernihiv, Kyiv administrative regions and in Crimea.Detailed data of all records are presented in regional order in the table 1. Th ese points are mapped on the fi g. 2 as well with numbers according to table 1 and years of records in parentheses.
Th us, C. erythraea is abundant in south areas, in other territories it occurs rarer.It expansion in Ukraine toward the north and east has been observed obviously.Th e fl ight period in Ukraine was registered from the end of May to end of September.Larvae were collected in diff erent type of waters, such as lakes, ponds, rivers, brooks and pools, brackish waters.One of aspects which defi ne this species is its ability to colonise the waterbodies on initial stages of succession.C. erythraea is characterized by R-strategy of population development, preference for higher temperature of environment, good fl yers in adults, exophytic oviposition and other features of "winners" spe-  3,15.06.2003, 15.05.2004, 5.06.2004, 4, 18.07.2004, 17.08 cies (in competition).Most northern point of it breeding in Ukraine was registered in the north in Kyiv region (№ 3 in tab.2).As climatic changes taking place, in Ukraine the average temperatures increases on 0,2-0,3°C during last two decades (Bilyavs'ky et al, 2004)), so more intensive expansion of Mediterranean species could be expected in future.

Table 1 .
Records of Crocothemis erythraea in Ukraine