Hermaeophaga mercurialis (Fabricius, 1792)

During a study of the leaf-beetle fauna of Latvia, the genus and species of flea beetle Hermaeophaga mercurialis (Fabricius, 1792) was recorded for the first time.

The material and locality ( Fig. 1 View Fig ): Latvia, Daugavpils district, Naujene, Juzefova park, 27.IV.2007 (6 specimens) leg. K.Aksjuta and M.Murd. The examined material is stored in Daugavpils University Institute of Systematic Biology (DUBC).

The species Hermaeophaga mercurialis (Fabricius, 1792) is distributed across Europe north of the Pyrenees, Central Italy and the Dinaric Alps, inluding Ukraine, England (south) and Asia Minor ( Gruev, Döberl 1997; Warchalowski 2003). In the Baltic states and Fennoscandia, it is known from Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark and Sweden ( Silfverberg 2004). It has also been recorded from Byelarus ( Lopatin, Nesterova 2005), the Kaliningrad region ( Alekseev 2003) and the Caucasus ( Bieńkowski 2004), but not from St.Petersburg and the Leningrad province ( Russia) ( Romantsov 2007).

Hermaeophaga mercurialis (Fabricius, 1792) is a stenotopic, silvicol, herbicol and phyllophagous species ( Koch 1992). It is a monophagous species and occurs on the host plant species, Mercurialis perensis. From Austria, it has also been recorded from the species Mercurialis ovata ( Koch 1992) . This species inhabits deciduous forests, and also parks and gardens.

The upper side of Hermaeophaga mercurialis (Fabricius, 1792) ( Fig. 2 View Fig , 3 View Fig ) is black with feeble bluish metallic reflection. The transverse impression of the pronotum is joined to the basal margin by two short, longitudinal furrows. Elytra with randomly scattered punctuation. Humeral calli are absent and the body is broadly-oval and convex. The frons and vertex are smooth and strongly shiny, with a few strong punctures between the eyes. Body length is 2.3 – 3.2 mm ( Bieńkowski 2004; Warchalowski 2003).

Hermaeophaga mercurialis (Fabricius, 1792) is published as a new species to Latvia of the genus Hermaeophaga , which is also new to Latvia. After this record, the Latvian fauna of leaf-beetles of the subfamily Alticinae comprises a total of 19 genera and 135 species.