Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 67(2): 279-285, doi: 10.3897/travaux.67.e117675

First record of Atypophthalmus umbratus (Diptera, Limoniidae) from Central Europe, a species introduced accidentally throughout global trade of exotic plants

Boróka-Zsuzsánna Jancsó^‡, Marcell Kárpáti^‡, Lujza Keresztes^‡

‡ Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Corresponding author: Marcell Kárpáti ( karpati.marcell@ubbcluj.stud.ro )

Academic editor: Ionut Stefan Iorgu

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Jancsó B-Z, Kárpáti M, Keresztes L (2024) First record of Atypophthalmus umbratus (Diptera, Limoniidae) from Central Europe, a species introduced accidentally throughout global trade of exotic plants. Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 67(2): 279-285. https://doi.org/10.3897/travaux.67.e117675

Abstract

Here we report the first data of the exotic Atypophthalmus umbratus (de Meijere, 1911) from two Central European countries, Romania and Hungary. This is the first time that the presence of an introduced exotic species of Limoniidae (Diptera) has been reported in the area. The above-mentioned species was first observed in Cluj, Romania, on tropical plant specimens (e.g. Alocasia x mortfontanensis ‘Polly’), which we bought from a large store selling tropical plants, from which both male and female specimens were collected. After that, checking some citizen science platforms of entomological interest, we also noticed record of the species in Hungary, based on their conspicuous wing pattern and general habitus. The presence of this accidentally introduced species far from its native tropical environment highlights the growing intensity of the global exotic plant market and the importance of citizen science in early warning systems for biological invasions.

Keywords

crane flies, first record, introduced species, global trade, exotic plant market, social media