Hadena vulcanica (Turati, 1907)

Host plants:
The larvae mainly feed on flowers and seeds of Silene sp. I collected larvae of the Balkans subspecies Hadena vulcanica urumovi on/with Silene multicaulis.

Habitat:
Hadena vulcanica inhabits xeromontane places such as rocky slopes, stony and dry meadows and sunny, stony and dry clearings in very light mountain forests between 1000 and 2500 meters above sea level. Hadena vulcanica is mainly restricted to heights between 1500 and 2300m above sea level in Northern Greece.

Life cycle:
The pupa hibernates. The moth is on the wing between June and August according to sea height. I found numerous young larvae on Mount Olympus (Greece) between late July and early August 2012 between 1900 and 2200m above sea level. The later instars should be found until mid-September.

Oviposition occurs inside the flower (e.g. ovary, inner side of calyx). The egg is much smaller than the ovum of the syntopical Hadena caesia.

Remarks:
Hadena vulcanica is known from very few places in mountains of Southern Europe (central Spain: ss. expectata, Mount Etna on Sicily: nominate subspecies, southern Balkans: ssp. urumovi in Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece). The latter also occurs in Asia Minor (quite abundant in mountain ranges) and in southern Ukraine. The ssp expectata is very recently sometimes raised into species rank.