Biodiversity of the Subfamily Catocalinae Boisduval, [1818] (Lepidoptera; Noctuidae) in Iran

Iran is the 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km² (636,372 sq mi). it is a mountainous country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in three spheres of asiairan's climate ranges from arid or semiarid, to subtropical along the caspian coast and the northern forests. on the northern edge of the country (the caspian coastal plain) temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid for the rest of the year. the populous western part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the zagros and alborz mountains; the last contains iran's highest point. the northern part of iran is covered by dense rain forests called shomal or the jungles of iran. the eastern part consists mostly of desert basins such as the dasht-e kavir, iran's largest desert, in the northcentral portion of the country, and the dasht-e lut, in the east, as well as some salt lakes. this is because the mountain ranges are too high for rain clouds to reach these regions. iran’s faunal diversity is comparatively high due to the country’s varied geological, altitudinal and climatic structure; therefore it would be expected that there is a rich lepidoptera fauna in this country. in the present paper the list of the species and subspecies of subfamily catocalinae in iran is provided. totally, 111 species and subspecies belong to 22 genera are listed. in addition, new distributional data for some species are presented here (table 1).