Uromenus dyrrhachiacus

Uromenus dyrrhachiacus (Karny, 1918)

ALBANIA: Durrës district, Kodra e Portës, N 41.372, E 019.422, 30 m a.s.l., 21 vii 2015, leg. G. Puskás & G. Szövényi. Sound records available in Cigliano et al. 2021, bio.acusti.ca.

In the field and in captivity specimens were observed to produce sounds mostly from late afternoon to the night, but few sound productions were heard also in the morning. Song consisted of long sequences of syllables (repeated often for 3-4 minutes or even longer). The song (Fig. 2, 3) is similar to that of U. elegans (see Tab. 1). One (out of six) specimen produced regularly weak opening hemisyllables. Completely synchronized singing of some males was observed in captivity.

The stridulatory file of the male carries about 150 teeth (Fig. 7; Tab. 2). In the middle of the file the inter-tooth intervals are about 35 µm. The male tegmina are in shape similar to U. elegans, but the mirror in the right tegmen is rather ovoid and the scraper is considerably larger. The structure and the location of the stridulatory organ in females are similar to U. elegans. In the middle of the female’s stridulatory file the inter-tooth intervals are about 21 µm.

Ecology. The species is described from the strict neighbourhood of Durrës in Albania, and is known so far only from this place. It inhabits the dry shrub covering the southern and western slopes of coastal hills made of pebble conglomerate west and northwest of Durrës. As it is known from the original description and was confirmed by field observations, it lives mostly on spiny rough bushes of Spartium junceum, Scolymus hispanicus, Cirsium spp and Carduus spp. and feeds on their young sprouts and flowers and on small insects as well (Karny 1918). This species is endangered by the recent touristic developments in the Adriatic coastline at Durrës, the second largest town in Albania and assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List (Chobanov et al. 2016).