Check List 19(4): 527-532, doi: 10.15560/19.4.527

New records of Largemouth Black Bass, Micropterus salmoides (Lacépède, 1802) (Pisces, Centrarchidae), in Bulgaria

Kiril Valkanov^‡, Nikolay Kolev^§, Teodora Koynova^§, Nikolay Natchev^§

‡ Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria§ University of Shumen, Shumen, Bulgaria

Corresponding author: Teodora Koynova ( t.koynova@shu.bg )

Academic editor: Arturo Angulo

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Valkanov K, Kolev N, Koynova T, Natchev N (2023) New records of Largemouth Black Bass, Micropterus salmoides (Lacépède, 1802) (Pisces, Centrarchidae), in Bulgaria. Check List 19(4): 527-532. https://doi.org/10.15560/19.4.527

Abstract

In the present study we report on new localities of Largemouth Black Bass, Micropterus salmoides (Lacé-pède, 1802), detected on the territory of Bulgaria. This invasive predator was observed for the first time in 2018 in a water basin in the capital city of Sofia city (western Bulgaria) and the following monitoring revealed that seven water bodies in the capital were inhabited by adults, subadults, and juvenile specimens. In 2021 and 2022, this spe-cies was captured in water basins in the vicinity of lake Mandra near the city of Burgas (south-eastren Bulgaria). Currently, these sites represent the easternmost localities within the distribution of M. salmoides in the Balkan peninsula and perhaps in continental Europe.

Keywords

Citizen science, invasive vertebrates, limnology, monitoring, predator, urban ecology