Distribution
The wildlife garden at the Natural History Museum, where Arocatus longiceps was found in 2007 © Natural History Museum, London
This insect occurs in Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey, Cyprus and the Ukraine.
It is also common in the Near East, in the Caucasus and southern European Russia. It is not known how far east in Asia the species extends.
Over recent decades it has extended its distribution steadily westwards, taking in central Europe and more recently appearing in Spain, France, the Netherlands and the British Isles.
Habitat
Many of the countries recently invaded by this bug are outside the natural distribution of its host tree - the plane tree - and it can only live there because people have introduced these trees.
Plane trees are popular in towns and cities, as they are hardy, long-lived and attractive.
In most cases, the plane trees were introduced decades or centuries before the insect arrived. For example the planes in the gardens of the Natural History Museum have been here since the 1880s, but the bug only arrived in 2007.
Why it has arrived now, and not before, is a mystery but suspects include international trade and climate change.
