The limits of the Palaearctic Region, like those of other biogeographical regions, are arbitrarily defined (Map 1). For practical reasons, the boundaries of the Palaearctic Region usually follow national boundaries. The region includes Europe, Africa north of the Sahara, and Asia except for the part that is arbitrarily defined as belonging to the Oriental Region.

For each species and subspecies, an outline of its present distribution is given using symbols. The Palaearctic Region is further subdivided into three main parts, Europe (letter E), North Africa (letter N) and Asia (letter A).

Europe includes the Azores, Iceland and Turkey west of the Bosporus. The eastern boundaries are a matter of controversy. In the present Catalogue, Europe includes Russia west of the main range of the Ural Mountains (Permsky Krai, Bashkortostan Republic and Orenburg Oblast entirely, in Sverdlovsk Oblast and Chelyabinsk Oblast only the parts west of 60ºE) and a small part of Kazakhstan west of the Ural River. The south-eastern boundaries are the northern political boundaries of Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Caspian and Black seas. The limits of Ukraine reflect the position in 2021; Luhansk Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Kherson Oblast are parts of Ukraine. Crimea is listed separately, mainly due to its unique fauna. Abkhazia is for practical reasons given under Georgia.

In the previous Edition the abbreviation YU designated Serbia and Montenegro (at that time constituting the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) only, however, many authors adopted it for records from entire former Yugoslavia. During the preparation phase of the Catalogue Serbia and Montenegro were split, what was not reflected in the published version. Subsequently also Kosovo was declared as independent therefore in the present edition each of the countries of former Yugoslavia has its own abbreviation to avoid any further confusions and misapplications.

North Africa includes Morocco (incl. Western Sahara), Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt west of the Suez Canal, and the Canary, Madeira and Salvage islands.

Asia includes Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula (including Socotra), Turkey east of the Bosporus, the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), the Middle East and Central Asian countries, Russia east of the main range of the Ural Mountains, Korea, Japan (including the Ryukyu Archipelago and the Japanese Pacific Islands), the entire People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Bhutan, Nepal, North India along the base of the Himalayas (Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand (north-western area of former Uttar Pradesh), Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir) and all of Pakistan. Thus, India is the only state for which strict political boundaries were not followed.

Two-letter symbols provided for countries are arranged in alphabetical order within each subdivision. The two-letter symbols for major areas of Russia, North Indian states, and three-letter symbols for provinces of mainland China and for Taiwan (see Map 3) are placed in brackets after the respective country code. Russia is subdivided into seven major sub-regions (Map 2). In previous editions of the Palaearctic Catalogue Siberia was divided into West Siberia and East Siberia only. Now, Siberia is divided into three units: East Siberia, South Siberia and West Siberia, which aim to better describe its zoogeographical diversity. South Siberia includes the entire republics of Altai, Tuva and Khakassia, Kemerovo Region without the part north of Kemerovo, the extreme south of Altai Province, the southern part of Krasnoyarsk Province to the latitude of Krasnoyarsk, the South-West of Irkutsk Region and the western part of the Republic of Buryatia to Selenga River in the east. The symbols RU for Russia and CH for the People’s Republic of China, without specification in parentheses, are used only in cases where precise information was not available.

Manchuria (also Mandzhuria or Manchukuo) was a geographical region in Northeast Asia often referred to by various authors, in particular by G. G. Jacobson, until 1949. It is presently divided between China (Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning and eastern part of Inner Mongolia) and Russia (south-eastern part of Russian Far East including Sakhalin); e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchuria. In many recent publications, old Manchurian records from the Chinese part were automatically considered to be from Heilongjiang (compare, for example, the record of Parnops atriceps Pic, Jacobson (1910b) and its interpretation by Li et al. (2008) through the citation in Tan et al. (2005)). However, at least since 1905, Jacobson also had material from Jilin and Liaoning, and many of his Manchurian records thus belong to these provinces, which can be verified by checking locality labels under respective specimens. The following localities are situated in Jilin (collector Serikov): “Цайцзягоу, ю. Харбина” (Tsaitzyagou, S of Harbin) [= Caijiagou, 45°06′55″N, 126°08′29″E]; and Liaoning (collector Bortkevich, mostly in surroundings of “Мамайкая” (Mamaikaya)) [= Mamajecun, 41°25′36″N 122°51′25″E]): “Чендятунь, з. Мамайкая, Мугден” (Chendyatun’, W of Mamaikaya, Mukden) [= Zhengjiatun, 41°28′38″N 122°45′10″E], “Худяпуза, з. Мамайкая, Мугден” (Hudyapuza, W of Mamaikaya, Mukden) [= Houjia Gangzi, 41°24′09″N, 122°47′34″E], “Сышагоу, ю.з. Мамайкая, Мугден” (Syshagou, SW of Mamaikaya, Mukden) [approximately 41°21′N 122°46′E], “Лангаши” (Langashi) [this locality was not found but is certainly situated in the same area]. We thank Alexey Moseyko for providing this essential information about Manchuria.

Some, usually older, distributional records cannot be accommodated within the structure of the Catalogue (e.g., Arabia, Caucasus, North India, Siberia). Such information is given in quotation marks (e.g., “Caucasus”) after the last symbol of the subdivision. Distributional records of species-group taxa with isolated occurrence, either endemic to very small geographic area (e.g. islands, mountains etc.) or widely distributed in one area but restricted in another area, may be specified in parentheses.

The extralimital distribution of Palaearctic species is indicated by three letter symbols in boldface located at the end of the respective geographical information. The extralimital regions for the purposes of the Catalogue are defined as follows (see Map 1): Nearctic (NAR): north of Mexico; Neotropical (NTR): south of the United States; Afrotropical (AFR): south of the North African states included in the Palaearctic Region; Oriental (ORR): areas south of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, areas south of Himalayan India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia west of the Lydekker line; Australian (AUS): south and east of the Lydekker line, and Pacific (PAC). Introductions are indicated by the letter “i” (e.g., Ei: GB).

In general, the presented distributional information is based on published records scattered in an enormous number of publications. Therefore, the second-level geographic information is not necessarily exhaustive, it should rather be considered as a baseline for future faunal research. The authors of some groups in the current catalogue were unable to find published sources or voucher specimens for some countries or areas listed in the previous Edition. These distribution data are included in the present catalogue but also listed in the Comments. In addition, to present distributional information as accurate as possible, new faunistic records are presented in this Edition, in New Acts chapter separately for each subfamily or tribe.

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The limits of the geographic Regions as defined for the purpose of this Catalogue

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Subdivisions of Russia

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Subdivisions and provinces of the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan

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