Metrioptera bicolor (Philippi, 1830)

Nutrition:
Grasses, also small insects.

Habitat:
Metrioptera bicolor colonizes higher growing, more xerothermous, weakly to moderately grazed, but unmown nutrient-poor grasslands. On the Swabian Alb it is most common in south-facing Brachypodium pinnatum-feltings of weakly grazed limestone juniper grasslands.

Life cycle:
Imagines are observed from late June or early July to October. The eggs overwinter in grass stalks or other plant parts.

Endangerment: endangered

Endangerment factors:
Metrioptera bicolor is endangered due to the decline of suitable nutrient-poor grasslands and fallow land. But it benefits from the reduction in grazing and the abandonment of many areas, at least for a certain time - just until the succession has progressed too far.

Remarks:
In Southern Germany, for example in the Jurassic landscapes of the Swabian and Franconian Alb, this species is distributed quite widely, however, much less common further north. It lacks at least today in much of northern Germany (only in the East).

The overall distribution ranges from the Spanish Bracelona in the west to Mongolia in the east. In Europe, Metrioptera bicolor occurs especially in eastern France, southern and eastern Germany, low-lying parts of the Alps (about the Alpine Rhine Valley) and Eastern Europe.