New record of Theophilea subcylindricollis Hladil, 1988 in Bulgaria (Insecta: Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

: Theophilea subcylindricollis Hladil, 1988 was recorded for the second time in Bulgaria. A single male specimen was found on 7 May 2023 in Vinarovo Village, Vidin Province, Northwestern Bulgaria. Photos of the specimen ex situ are presented.


Introduction
Genus Theophilea (Cerambycidae) with type species T. cylindricollis Pic, 1895, was described by Pic in 1895 on the base of material from Armenia and subsequently it was reported from South European Russia, Ukraine and Hungary.After a comparative study of a large number of specimens Hladil (1988) considered that the specimens from Armenia are different from those collected in Hungary and described a new species T. subcylindricollis Hladil, 1988.Now the range of type species is limited to Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Iran (Hoskovec et al., 2023).Currently, the genus Theophilea includes only these two species.
In 2023, a single specimen of T. subcylindricollis was observed and collected in a private yard in Vinarovo Village, Vidin Province.This note reports a second finding of the species in Bulgaria.

Methods
The specimen was photographed ex situ with an EOS 1200D (Canon) digital camera.The collected specimen was deposited in the collection of National Museum of Natural History in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Morphological notes: Theophilea subcylindricollis is apparently similar to Calamobius filum (Rossi, 1790), but it can be distinguished from the latter by the presence of long dark hairs on the ventral side of the antenna, the metallic luster of the elytra and the absence of a furrow on the median tibia (Bense, 1995;Dascǎlu, 2005).
Notes on biology: The larvae develop in the stems of grasses (Poaceae), e.g.Elymus repens, Poa angustifolia and Dactylis glomerata (Pil & Perić, 2012).The adults are active from April to July (Hoskovec et al., 2023) and are weak fliers (Pil & Perić, 2012).The habitats of the species are herbaceous communities in the flooded areas of the forest-steppe region, real steppes and loess steppes (Pil & Perić, 2012).
Notes on distribution: According to Zamoroka (2017) the original range of T. subcylindricollis was restricted to Pannonia and North Black Sea Region, but recently it is expanding westward, northward and eastward.According to Hoskovec et al. (2023) T. subcylindricollis is known from the Czech Republic, Hungary, North Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.The species is also reported from Austria (Wiesbauer, New record of Theophilea subcylindricollis Hladil, 1988 in Bulgaria 2015), Bulgaria (Siering & Beier, 2019) and most recently from Albania (Kovács & Mesaroš, 2021).The species is rare and strictly protected in Serbia (Pil & Perić, 2012).
Both localities where T. subcylindricollis was recorded in Bulgaria are from the Danubian Plain, Northern Bulgaria, but are far away from each other.In Bulgaria the species was collected for the first time on 6 May 2017 around Ivanovski Manastir, Rusenski Lom River Valley, district of Ruse, Northeastern Bulgaria, and was subsequently reported by Siering & Beier (2019).The new locality in Vinarovo Village, Vidin Province is by far the northernmost in the country.Also there is a record from Gamzigradska Banja near Zaječar, Eastern Serbia (Popović et al., 2013), which is close to the border with Bulgaria and not far away from the new locality.
As the species was recently discovered in Bulgaria, further research is needed to establish its exact distribution in the country.It is possible that T. subcylindricollis can be found in other localities, most likely in Northern Bulgaria.