The survey covered three countries with very unequal levels of lepidopterological exploration. Bulgaria is perhaps the best-studied of the thirteen Balkan states, and additions to its national moth list are becoming increasingly difficult to find. North Macedonia is less thoroughly explored, and new national records are still easily made. Albania remains poorly investigated; in a single recent publication, roughly fifty species were added to the country’s list at once. The authors attribute these gaps to the scarcity of local lepidopterists, limited use of modern collecting methods, and the absence of year-round research, including targeted surveys for the so-called winter moths that fly in late autumn and early spring when few collectors are active.

The collecting methodology was deliberately intensive. The team deployed two or three portable light traps powered by 12-volt, 9-ampere-hour batteries, fitted with 8-watt BL368 and BL812 black light tubes. A Finnish tent trap with a 160-watt mercury vapour bulb at the top of a pole, and a 20-watt BL368 mini-lynx black light compact lamp over the catching pot beneath, formed the centrepiece of each night’s operation. An additional 20-watt black light lamp was positioned about seventy metres from the tent trap, and the traps themselves were sometimes more than a kilometre apart, placed in different habitats and conditions wherever possible. All traps ran throughout the night, maximising the chance of intercepting species with narrow flight windows.

Perhaps the most scientifically consequential record concerns a single aberrant male lappet moth caught in March 2013 in the Middle Vardar river valley near Demir Kapiya, North Macedonia, at around 130 metres elevation. The specimen was originally reported as Eriogaster rimicola, a European species, but with an anomaly: its forewings bore an elongate black discal spot instead of the typical round white one, and its hind wings were incompletely developed. At the time, the related species Eriogaster inspersa was unknown from Europe, and the specimen was not dissected. Now, seventeen years later, genitalia dissection has settled the question: the moth is Eriogaster inspersa, a species described as new by Joachim de Freina in 1988 under the name Eriogaster nippei and later synonymised with Staudinger’s older name.

The dissection also solved the puzzle of the black spot. Microscopic examination showed that the dark coloration is not a genetic aberration but the result of leaked and dried haemolymph — insect blood — that dried as a small patch on the forewing, with a similar mark on one hind wing. The male genitalia are highly distinctive, with a flattened, broad, plate-like vinculum, whereas in E. rimicola the vinculum is narrow and short. Eriogaster inspersa had been reported as new for Europe from Greece in 2016, but the North Macedonian specimen, more than 300 kilometres away, marks the most northern and western point of the species’ known range. The habitat — pseudomaquis with kermes oak, Christ’s thorn and oriental plane on limestone soil — fits the species’ Mediterranean character.

Several other records required careful genitalia work for confirmation. Anchoscelis luteogrisea, a late autumn noctuid only recently identified from Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia and Albania, was recorded for the second time from both North Macedonia and Bulgaria, at Pletvar Pass on Babuna Planina and at three Bulgarian sites in the Pirin and southern mountain regions. Because of small external differences, the species can be misidentified with the closely related A. litura, making dissection essential. Similarly, Griposia bouveti pinkeri — known in Europe from only a handful of Greek localities, these two Bulgarian sites, and European Turkey — was recorded for the second time for Bulgaria, about forty years after the first and from a fairly close location in the Pirin mountains. One of the authors checked a great number of specimens from southern Bulgaria, Albania and North Macedonia, but all proved to be the commoner G. aprilina, indicating that G. bouveti pinkeri may be very rare and local in those areas.

The study also confirmed Polymixis xanthomista for the Balkan Peninsula from a single female collected in October 2019 on Mount Lunxhërisë in southern Albania, at around 1010 metres on limestone mountain steppe with oaks, oriental hornbeam and maples. To date, the only two specimens of this species known from the Balkan Peninsula were recorded from Bulgaria in the 1960s, but the authors express serious doubts about those records. The Slivov collection specimens lack reliable provenance, and repeated autumn collecting above Lakatnik Railway Station failed to confirm the species from the area. The Albanian female, with examined genitalia, therefore represents a genuine and verifiable confirmation of P. xanthomista for the Balkan Peninsula, and the authors suggest that this Atlantico-Mediterranean species colonised the Balkans directly from the Central Apennines to the Albanian coast, rather than along the Adriatic coasts of Italy and Dalmatia.

Two palaeotropical-subtropical species found in the same locality in the Struma river valley of south-west Bulgaria point to a changing climate. Ctenoplusia accentifera, known in Bulgaria only from a single 1995 specimen in the Rhodopi Mountains, was recorded in October 2020 on a rocky hill above a fishpond near Levunovo village — the second national record, from a different region, elevation and habitat. Mythimna languida, new for Bulgaria, was caught at the same site in November 2020. This palaeotropical-subtropical noctuid, known in Europe mainly from the Mediterranean coast, has recently spread inland and northward, with records from Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Denmark. The authors believe that in Bulgaria, as at the only known North Macedonian locality, the records are presumably due to migration, and that the species’ spread is a result of climate change.

Egira anatolica, an early spring noctuid, was confirmed for Albania at two new sites and reported from several Bulgarian localities in the Struma valley and surrounding mountains. The species flies in March and April, and its scarcity in records may reflect both its early flight period and possible misidentification with other Egira species. Identification without genitalia examination is generally straightforward for experienced workers, but the authors recommend dissection or at least brushing of the external genitalia for confirmation. The size and number of the cornuti in the vesica provide a further distinction between E. anatolica and the similar E. conspicillaris, which was also recorded during the surveys.

The broader message of the study is that the Balkans remain insufficiently investigated even for Macrolepidoptera, and that species new to Europe can still be found within the peninsula. Some species, such as Anchoscelis luteogrisea, Griposia bouveti pinkeri and Egira anatolica, may simply be overlooked because full genitalia examination is necessary for confirmation. Most of the species reported here are on the wing in early spring or late autumn, when collecting is sometimes problematic due to weather conditions — a reminder that the calendar itself shapes what we know about European moth faunas. As warming climates push Mediterranean and subtropical species northward, and as targeted year-round light-trapping continues in poorly explored countries like Albania and North Macedonia, the national lists of Balkan Lepidoptera are likely to keep growing for years to come.

Subject of Research: New and rare moth records for Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania based on field surveys and genitalia dissections

Article Title: Contribution to knowledge of the Balkan Macroheterocera : new and rare species for Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania

Article References: Beshkov, S., Gashtarov, V., & Hula, V. (2021). Contribution to knowledge of the Balkan Macroheterocera: new and rare species for Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania. Nota Lepidopterologica, 44, 223-237. https://doi.org/10.3897/nl.44.64804

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/nl.44.64804

Keywords: Lepidoptera, Balkans, moths, biodiversity, genitalia dissection, climate change, faunistics, Noctuidae, Contribution, knowledge, Balkan, Macroheterocera