Urban parks derived from historical forest fragments represent important refugia for biodiversity in rapidly expanding cities. The wood cricket, Nemobius sylvestris, was surprisingly found in a park in the northern part of Bucharest, Romania, an area under exponential residential development. The species was confirmed by calling song analysis and molecularly confirmed through DNA-barcoding. The acoustic analysis revealed substantial geographic variation in the signals of N.sylvestris across its European range, with the Romanian population exhibiting the most distinctive acoustic characteristics. A median joining network was constructed using available COI sequences from public databases, showing moderate genetic variability within European samples. This flightless, woodland-specialist cricket is highly sensitive to habitat fragmentation and its persistence in this urban park demonstrates the conservation value of retaining semi-natural forest structure within city green spaces. Our findings highlight the importance of urban parks as biodiversity refugia, particularly for habitat specialists with limited dispersal abilities. This discovery underscores the need for the integrative conservation management of urban forest remnants, emphasizing the retention of natural structural elements such as leaf litter and heterogeneous canopy cover to support diverse invertebrate communities.

We herein report the first record of two bush-cricket species, Poecilimon affinis and Isophya modesta , from Vrancea Mountains in the Eastern Carpathians, documented during our regular fieldwork conducted in the period 2013–2014. For P. affinis , Vrancea Mountains represent the new easternmost location in its Carpathian distribution range, extending approximately 60 km northeast from the previously known eastern limit, in Ciucaș Mountains. The discovery of I. modesta in montane habitats near Soveja is particularly significant, as this area is geographically isolated from other known populations and may represent an important biogeographical link between the Transylvanian and the Wallachian and Dobrogean populations.