Scorpionflies (Mecoptera) represent a small insect order, comprising three families in Europe: Bittacidae, Boreidae, and Panorpidae. Bittacidae contain only two rare species in Europe. The first one, Bittacus italicus (Müller, 1766), is considered extinct in Bulgaria, because it has not been recorded since 1980 according to the Bulgarian Red List, and only has three Balkan records after 1950 according to Devetak et al. (2022). Bittacus hageni Brauer, 1860, is quite rare in the territory of the Balkan peninsula, with only two recent records, both in the Northwest (Croatia and Bosnja and Herzegovina, respectively). Our record from Burgas district, Rezovo village (SE Bulgaria), is the first one from Bulgaria, the third one for the Balkans, and the southeasternmost one. This considerably expands its known range and highlights the need for surveying this rare genus in the periphery of its range.

From the family Panorpidae, there are eight species so far reported from Bulgaria (one of which has two subspecies), all in the genus Panorpa. Three of these species can be defined as common: P. germanica Linnaeus, 1758, P. hybrida MacLachlan, 1882, and P. vulgaris Imhoff & Labram, 1845. Panorpa alpina Rambur, 1842 is one of the rarest species, with only one report from Bulgaria with no exact location. The present report confirms the first exact locations for P. alpina in several closely situated localities in the Vitosha Mts ( subalpine zone and beech). It is a notoriously variable species which caused previous authors to describe multiple species, most of which have been synonymized since. The structure of the Balkan populations has been poorly studied, with Lauterbach (1972) describing one "species" under the name of P. plitvicensis. The Bulgarian individuals do not conform to this morphotype. This study is part of a project under grant contract number KP-06-N61/6 – 14.12.2022.