Rediscovery of Serangium montazerii Fürsch in Georgia and updated list of the Coccinellidae of Georgia

This article provides an updated list of the Coccinellidae of Georgia, recording 84 species. Serangium montazerii Fürsch nec S. parcesetosum Sicard is also rehabilitated as a species actually present in the country.

Here we propose an updated list of the Coccinellidae found in Georgia, taking into account the actual phylogeny and nomenclature. We also report the rediscovery of Serangium montazerii Fürsch, 1995nec Serangium parcesetosum Sicard, 1929 in an orange grove near Batumi, and make address nomenclatural confusion about the species in Georgia.

Site description
The sampled site is located at Chakvis Tskali, Kobuleti District, Adjara (41.71843°N, 41.73841°E) in a familial orange grove and garden. Further orange trees located 6 km eastward along the Chakvistskali River were also sampled. Observations were conducted on 25-VI-2019.
The climate of the region is characteristic of the Batumi area and the Black Sea Georgian coast, with high precipitations (avg. 2515 mm/year), mild winters (avg. 7 °C in January) and mild summers (avg. 23 °C in July). The region has warm temperate, almost subtropical, climate conditions (Bohn et al. 2000(Bohn et al. -2003. The vegetation is represented by hygrophilous thermophytic mixed deciduous broadleaved forest (Bohn et al. 2000(Bohn et al. -2003. The presence of many citrus orchards, with their specific pests, have made Batumi a focus of biocontrol attempts, with release of exotic Coccinellidae during the Soviet period (Timofeyeva and Hoang Duc Nhuan 1978).

Sampling method
Beating trays were used to collect ladybird beetles by beating and shaking the branches of orange trees. The ladybird beetles were then collected with an aspirator and subsequently identified to species level in the laboratory using available literature (Gourreau 1974, Iablokoff-Knzorian 1978, Poorani 1998, Bieńkowski 2018, 2020.

Serangium montazerii on Citrus sp.
This non-native species intentionally introduced in Georgia (Adjara) was initially identified as Serangium parcesetosum Sicard, 1929 (Timofeyeva andHoang Duc Nhuan, 1978). These authors also reassigned it to its original genus after the transfer to the genus Catana by Chapin (1940). They were followed by latter authors and by Escalona and Slipinski (2012).
However, Fürsch (1995) described a new species, Serangium montazerii Fürsch, 1995 from Iranian specimens (Mazandran Province). Subsequently Duverger (1998) as-signed all the introduced populations of Serangium in Western Europe, which were resulting from the first one introduced by Timofeyeva and Hoang Duc Nhuan (1978), to this latter species. However, after examination of specimens from Corsica, Coutanceau (2006), and Coutanceau and Malausa (2014) assigned the French introduced populations to S. parcesetosum. Their works, published in French in an amateurs' journal, remained largely unknown. Escalona and Slipinski (2012) in their revision of the Microweiseinae subfamily did not examine any members of the two taxa. The specimens introduced in France (continental and Corsica, Malausa et al. (1988)), and in Turkey (Yigit and Canhilal 2005)) came from this Georgian source (Timofeyeva and Hoang Duc Nhuan 1978). Likewise, neither Fürsch (1995), nor Duverger (1998), nor Coutanceau (2006) examined or compared the two taxa. However, Poorani (1998) noted that the two species can be distinguished by the shape of the right paramere and by the inter-ocular distance. Bieńkowski (2020) also underlined the same diagnostic characters and revised illustrations of the genitalia of both taxa. Moreover, the population introduced in Georgia in the 1970's (Timofeyeva and Hoang Duc Nhuan 1978) came from North India (Raniket, Uttarakhand) where S. montazerii occurs, while S. parcesetosum is distributed into Central and Southern India (Poorani 1998).
We found one specimen of S. montazerii on orange trees ( Figure 1). It was female and we could not perform a determination using genitalia. However, the shape of the head with an inter-ocular distance equal to twice the size of the eyes ( Figure 1B) allows us to assign this specimen to S. montazerii. The location is close to Batumi, and corresponds to the area of first historical introduction of the species in Georgia, the country of first use of the species for biological control of D. citri (Timofeyeva and Hoang Duc Nhuan 1978). According to Yigit and Canhilal (2005), the species was still present in Georgia in 1990. It has probably been present in the country since 1975, but was not listed by Merkviladze and Kvavadze (2002). The species is also present northward in the vicinity of Sochi (Orlova-Bienkowskaja and Bieńkowski 2017; Bieńkowski 2018, 2020; Bieńkowski and Orlova-Bienkowskaja 2020) in Russia.

Tribe Diomini Gordon, 1999
• One species is recorded from Georgia.

Conclusion
The Georgian fauna of Coccinellidae is containing 84 species. Two species (S. biflammulatus and S. montazerii) have been added to the Merkviladze and Kvavadze (2002) list, but one species is dubious for the country (T. conatus); a further two species are now considered as synonyms. Thirty species were not listed in the Catalogue of Palearctic Coleoptera (Kovář 2007).  (Kovář 2007).