Galeruca melanocephala (Ponza, 1805)

Tsvetanov, Tsvetomir & Beenen, Ron, 2020, First record of Galeruca (Haptoscelis) melanocephala (Ponza, 1805) in Bulgaria (Insecta: Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), ZooNotes 159, pp. 1-3 : 1-2

Galeruca melanocephala

is known from large parts of Europe ( Beenen 2010). In his excellent series on leaf beetles of Poland, Warchałowski (1985 - 2000) presented European distribution maps of Chrysomelidae species. For Galeruca melanocephala the distribution includes parts of Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary and Romania. The distribution area in Romania is delimited just north of the Danubian Plain. Apart from that, isolated records are known form Denmark, Sweden, Poland, the northern and the southern part of European Russia ( Warchałowski 1994). In Asia this species is known from the Near East and also from Western Siberia ( Beenen 2010).

The first record in Bulgaria is not far away from the distribution as depicted by Warchałowski (1994). It seems likely that the leaf beetle specimens are part of a natural population. However, no specimens of this species have been found in the surroundings before. In fact, it is likely that this species may be found in other localities in the Danubian Plain in Bulgaria, just like in Northern Germany, where Galeruca melanocephala occurs along the river Elbe. According to Rheinheimer & Hassler (2018) this species lives on muddy banks of large rivers. Kulbe (2019) found it close to a river among marshes in Mecklenburg- Vorpommern ( Germany), and in the French Alsace Galeruca melanocephala also occurs on dry and rocky hills (Rheinheimer & Hassler 2018).

Records from Europe are not common and from several regions only old records are known. In the Red List of Germany it is classified as critically endangered (Stark gefährdet) ( Geiser 1998; Vom aussterben bedroht (F. Fritzlar, pers. comm.). From other parts of Europe we don’t know the state of endangerment. Recent European records are published from Poland ( Jałoszyński & Konwerski 2001), Romania (Iliie et al. 2019), Germany ( Esser 2013, Rheinheimer & Hassler 2018) and Northeast France ( Callot & Matter 2003, Callot 2018).

Host plants of Galeruca melanocephala are several Polygonaceae of the genera Polygonum and Rumex ( Urban 1932, Koch 1992, Böhme 2001). Although species of Polygonum are not specified, it is likely that species now included in Persicaria are host plants too.