First record of Coleophora gazella Toll, 1952 in Central Europe with notes on its biology

During the past years, we found a new Coleophora taxon in Hungary that proved to be unknown for the fauna of the country. We identified the unknown specimens using combined information from morphological examination including the female genitalia and genetic analyses. We sequenced the Cytochrome Oxidase “COI” gene of the mitochondrial DNA, and used the resultant base-pair sequence for species identification, using the BOLD platform, and for preparing a phylogenetic tree with the most closely related taxa involved. Our results show that larval and adult morphology, genitalia structure, and the sequence of the COI region of the unknown specimens are most similar to those of Coleophora gazella Toll, 1952. The habitats of the species in Hungary are strongly isolated from the nearest population in Turkey (Anatolia). We also studied habitat characteristics and life history of the species, which are briefly presented in this paper. The article contains four figures and two tables.