Rhopaloscelis unifasciatus Blessig, 1873

Karpinski, Lech, Szczepanski, Wojciech T., lewa, Radoslaw, Walczak, Marcin, Hilszczanski, Jacek, Kruszelnicki, Lech, Los, Krzysztof, Jaworski, Tomasz, Marek Bidas, & Tarwacki, Grzegorz, 2018, New data on the distribution, biology and ecology of the longhorn beetles from the area of South and East Kazakhstan (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae), ZooKeys 805, pp. 59-126 : 85

Rhopaloscelis unifasciatus Blessig, 1873 Fig. 4E, F

Material examined.

East Kazakhstan Region: Putintsevo [ Путинцево] env. (49°52'N, 84°21'E), 472 m a.s.l., 22-23 VI 2017, 2♀♀, leg. WTS; 1♂, leg. MB, coll. LK; 1♂, 1♀, leg. MW.

Remarks.

This is an east-Palaearctic species that is distributed from Altai to Sakhalin and Japanese islands, including China and the Korean peninsula ( Cherepanov 1991a, Danilevsky 2018a). It is a highly polyphagous species whose larvae develop in the twigs or thin shoots of various deciduous trees and shrubs; however, they prefer Salix , Morus , Acer , Aralia and Ulmus . The larvae feed very intensely in the upper layers of wood and create longitudinal, often densely arranged, larval feeding galleries that are filled with fine sawdust. The life cycle lasts about two years. The imagines are active from May to July. The adults conduct their supplementary feeding on the young and thin twigs or branches of various deciduous species ( Cherepanov 1991a).

Rhopaloscelis unifasciatus was recently reported from Kazakhstan for the first time by Danilevskaya et al. (2009) based on a single specimen that had accidently been collected on a stem of Artemisia in the Putintsevo environs.

In our research, several specimens were beaten down from the dead parts of young willows in a mountain deciduous forest dominated by Populus and Salix . These findings confirm the presence of this species in Kazakhstan. Rhopaloscelis unifasciatus shares the same habitat with other Lamiinae species, inter alia, Exocentrus stierlini and Saperda similis as well as with other saproxylic beetles, e.g. Kolibacia squamulata (Gebler, 1830) ( Trogossitidae ) ( Szczepański et al. 2018).