Christmas shopping entomology
I know for most people a Christmas shopping trip is a lost natural history opportunity. But for a pan-species lister, something good can turn up wherever and whenever. First up, this striking black-and-red Arocatus ?longiceps? bug found on the trunk of a Plane tree while browsing the Christmas market on the Champs Élysées, Paris on 20th November. My French specimen (on the left) looks quite different to the Arocatus longiceps I have previously found on London’s Plane trees (on the right, from the Natural History Museum’s wildlife garden), with paler appendages and reduced black markings on the body.
Arocatus from the Champs Elysees (L) and NHM garden (R)
The following weekend we visited Whipsnade Zoo with friends Rich and Sara and budding mammalogist Lucy. As well as doing some Christmas shopping in the gift shop, we found a couple of interesting insects in the Insect House but on the loose. There were trails of a miniscule ant which I think is a species of dolichoderine but doesn’t seem to be included in Bolton & Collingwood’s RES Handbook, or Skinner & Allen’s Naturalists’ Handbook.
Miniscule ?dolichoderine? ant from Whipsnade
And on the exit door, this Australian Cockroach Periplaneta australasiae was making a bid for freedom. I’ve seen this species before in the Eden Project biomes.
Australian Cockroach Periplaneta australasiae
Finally, our local Tesco in Leighton Buzzard still supports a population of the weevil Otiorhynchus crataegi in the car park, first found here in September 2008. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only Bedfordshire site for this weevil but I’m sure if more people looked it could be found much more widely. It was discovered new to Britain in Berkshire in 1980 and has since been reported from Surrey and Middlesex (map here, doubtless incomplete).
Every little helps (the beetle list)
Entomologising in car park shrubberies can be pretty good. Look out for feeding signs such as notched leaves. Whenever I get out my beating tray and start thwacking the shrubberies, I always imagine I’m going to be either set upon by security guards or ridiculed by crowds of jeering shoppers. But, in practice, everyone studiously ignores me, though I sometimes think mothers take a tighter grip of their children’s hands as they pass! Richard ‘Bugman’ Jones would advise wearing a hi-vis vest in such circumstances: it makes you look so much more official!
Notched leaves on this Euonymus are the first sign that weevils are present.
Otiorhynchus crataegi makes quite regular, semi-circular notches in the edges of the leaves.
Otiorhynchus crataegi: at a supermarket near you?
Happy Christmas shopping everyone!
Mistletoe Weevil Ixapion variegatum
Mistletoe: worth beating!
This photo was kindly taken for me by Tom at the Oxford Museum using their photo-montage kit. It seems a suitably festive (and rather beautiful) invertebrate, being completely dependent on mistletoe as its host plant. The Mistletoe Weevil was discovered new to Britain by Andy Foster of the National Trust on 11th August 2000 in Herefordshire. It has since also been found in West Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Monmouthshire. This one was in a fabulous orchard that David Gibbs and I surveyed in Herefordshire in July. On that survey, we also found the trio of mistletoe bugs: Pinalitus viscicola (the commonest one), Anthocoris visci (Nationally Scarce B) and Hypseloecus visci (discovered new to Britain by Dave at two sites in Somerset on 22nd & 30th July 2003). These were all new species for me in 2010: western orchards really are the best places to see this fauna, probably because there’s so much mistletoe growing within reach of the beating tray rather than in the crowns of big trees!
I’ve been to some superb sites in 2010 and seen a lot of good invertebrates. The downside to this is a very busy winter identifying them all and writing up reports. Doesn’t look like I’ll have a lot of time to expand this website but I will definitely post any additional staphylinid test keys as and when Derek issues them.
