Melitaea romanovi Grum-Grshimailo, 1891.

A nice and subtle fritillary species (underside rather resembling a Geometrid Stamnodes danilvi) confined to dry short-grass steppes of true Central Asia. The species is named in the honour of The Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhaylovich Romanov (1859-1919), a grandson of Nikolai the First, an owner of a large butterfly collection and the editor of "Memores sur les Lepidopteres".

Range: Central China, Mongolia, and the very southern Transbaikalia.

ssp.: puella Higgins, 1941; range: ? Transbaikalia.

A female; wings closed.

The southern slope, covered with a short-grass steppe, of the hill Chikhalan on the northern bank of a brackish Lake Zun-Torei, Onon district, Chita Province, S Transbaikalia (Dahuria), Siberia, Russia. 12th July 1996. O. Kosterin.