Photo #4654: Deilephila porcellus

Imago, ssp. suellus Staudinger, 1878

Base gallery. Upperside. Alive insect.

Photo, and identified by: Evgeny Komarov. Image redone at the website

Date and time, location shooting/catching: 2009-05-01 21:47:00, Astrakhan region, Dosang village, to the light.

Photographer's comment: There are some contradictory viewpoints by this subspecies/form: D. porcellus and all its forms, ssp. suellus included, are somehow taxonomically problematic. Many of them, suellus especially, are described as actual subspecies while they might have turned out to be rather D. porcellus forms. Since then Ssp.porcellus и suellus rejoined and now they're getting to have a features of another species in Turkey, North Iran and Tyan' Shan (translated from Sphingidae of the Western Palaearctic website). Nevertheless, some authors consider it as a right subspecies or even species. Somewhere in the Lower Volga near Volgograd a real, natural porcellus flies while in Astrakhan Zavolzh'ye there are only such ones. Transitional forms are not found.