Map

Despite a temporary decline in individual regions of Europe, there has been a general increase and increase within the populated areas for more than 100 years.In Germany, the map was only locally represented until the 1930s, from the middle of the century it was already widespread and in places frequently encountered. In the second half of the 20th century it spread in Germany to the north and west across Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein and the Netherlands to the North Sea coast. Already 1881 it was present in Jutland (Denmark). In 1955, the northern distribution limit of indigenous Danish populations was Falster, Lolland and Zealand. It reached Sweden in the 1970s, and in 1973 it was first seen in Finland. A. levana was found on May 30, 1973, in southeastern Finland, in Lauritsala, by a young lepidopterist, Mr Jouko E. Hokka. The specimen was the first known A. levana in northern Europe, excluding Denmark. Since 1983, the map has been established in Finland and has since steadily increased its area.

In the UK this species is a very rare vagrant, but there have also been several unsuccessful – and now illegal – attempts at introducing this species over the past 100 years or so: in the Wye Valley in 1912, the Wyre Forest in the 1920s, South Devon 1942, Worcester 1960s, Cheshire 1970s, South Midlands 1990s. All these introductions failed and eggs or larvae have never been recorded in the wild in the UK. (Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is now illegal to release a non-native species into the wild.)