The Melinopterus problem...

For some years I have wrestled with the identification of Melinopterus sphacelatus and M. prodromus. The other day there was a post on Beetles of Britain and Ireland FB Group of a Melinopterus that I recognised as M. sphacelatus but it was identified and then confirmed as M. prodromus. I offered a correction to the ID and confirmation, but it had me thinking. 

Melinopterus sphacelatus from 2024

My interest in these beetles has a connection with the film The Outrun. One of the entomologists who regularly visits Orkney has a particular interest in dung beetles in general and Aphodines in particular, and she'd got me interested in looking at them. Additionally, our pony's water proved irresistible to these beetles and I often found them, daily at times, struggling or drowned. In Orkney pretty much all the Melinopterus I found were M. sphacelatus. Indeed I must go back through my data and check any M. prodromus identifications (I have done, there were two and they still look good to me, and have been verified by DM. These still do not show on the NBN though.) 

Back to The Outrun. Aphodines are very sensitive to veterinary products and have significantly declined across the UK. On Orkney whilst I had a few species to light and some at our aforementioned pony field I went searching for more. A favourite walk was along the cliffs north of Skaill Bay and there lies the Liptrot farm. John Liptrot kept horses and the horse poo was full of Aphodines so I frequently searched there. On one occasion JL came and asked me what on Earth I was upto! In a friendly way. (And I did add a couple of species to the Orkney list via my poo investigating on his farm.)

 I spent yesterday morning at Comrie Community Woodland, firstly photographing bees on willow flowers, and then watching and photographing the caddis Philopotomus montanus along the burn, where there was an added bonus. 

Bumblebees are not fun to identify, I'm still pondering this one, a small worker. Or not, I've got the scale wrong, Bombus terrestris, queen, I think.

Field image

 

But I'd caught one a few days previously...

Philopotomus montanus, post capture image.

 The added bonus was a bee fly that settled nearby briefly and I managed to get some seriously rubbish images. I've not seen a bee fly for years, and never identified one to species previously so Bombylinus major is a welcome addition to the P-SL list, rubbish image or not.

Bombylinus major

I then went and rattled a Hawthorn bush and collected a few insects. Amongst which is a weevil that might be Anthonomous conspersus, which would be an excellent find.

Anthonomous conspersus (maybe)

There are various other beasts from the Hawthorn, including a barkfly that I don't recognise, more work to be done. 

Anyway, after all this activity, as we were leaving and I was putting the hound in the car I noticed an Aphodine on her coat. There is a pony field right by the car park so this was not a surprise, but as I picked it off I knew immediately that it was Melinopterus and not sphacelatus. I think this was because the pronotum is not so pitted and so the colour looks deeper black, there's less reflection maybe. Anyway beetle processed and photographed this morning and I was proven correct.

Less pitted pronotum maybe.

Showing the end of the pits on the 8th stria against a line drawn from the end of the scutellum. It may also be seen that the pits of the 7th stria continue on for some way. In M. sphacelatus the pits of the 8th stria stop beyond the line, or at least vaguely peter out in that direction.

Both this photo and the one above show a dense black edge to the back of the pronotum, not a hint of orange beyond the initial quarter.

Again showing the 8th stria pits stopping well short of the 7th.

Melinopterus prodromus.

I'm pleased with this record and as we are currently helping with some ponies nearby I must go and have a rummage through their poo.

 This week I've also found another very interesting beetle as I've set a pitfall in the garden baited with rotten meat. Along with the usual suspects I found this which after a bit of struggle has been confirmed as Omisita discoidea which appears to be rare or very uncommon this far north.

Omosita discoidea

And one of the usual suspects...

 

Unfortunately deceased in the trap, Oiceoptoma thoracium

Moth of the week was Lunar Marbled Brown. 

 

And there were a few other nice moths...

 

Double-striped Pug

Early Grey

Early Tooth-striped

Obsidentify had this as Seraphim, it would be a bit early. I think it is just the dark form of Mottled Grey

Water Carpet.

 

 Whilst I was closing the moth trap at around 04:20 a very large flock of Pink-feet went over, heard only of course. But later in the morning as I was working through my captures several more flocks went over, the largest being of 320; the total was probably well in excess of 800.

 

Around 160 in this flock.
 

 

They might be giants....?

Louise thought she had seen an Emperor Moth the other day, but as they do, it shot past at many mph and too rapidly disappeared. It's been beautifully sunny here for a few days, and Louise's sighting and the weather reminded me that I'd refreshed my EMP pheromone lure stock last year. I rummaged around in my freezer, found my new pheromones eventually, and some minutes later there was an EMP lure in a pop sock tied to a bamboo stick just by the kitchen window.

 I sat inside with a coffee and within five minutes I noticed some activity around the lure. However, it was not the expected activity, but something small and Lepidopteran was interested in the lure. Macro camera in hand I was rapdily engaged.

Pammene giganteana Early Oak Piercer

New for the garden, and new for me, nice! The EMP quickly attracted two more. I'd been aware that these were being caught in England to FUN lure of late, so a bit more of a rummage in the freezer, and hunt in the cupboard for a trap or two and I put out a FUN lure, which later on caught a single moth.

The next day both FUN and LEEK were also deployed in the garden but the occurrence had got me wondering, so after lunch I went to the Community Woodland armed with EMP, FUN and another trap. I carried the EMP lure around with me (don't use EMP in a trap as Emperor Moth is too large for the aperture and will damage itself) but I put a trap with FUN lure in amongst some old Oaks. I did a bit of grass clumping for beetles etc and an hour later went back to the trap. Good result four Pammene giganteana, a new species for the site. None came to EMP that I noticed. Back at home I had one to EMP and three to FUN.

Pammene giganteana

The clumping was not without results as well - a caterpillar (10mm) as yet unidentified, Philoscia muscorum, a Stenus and a Tachyporus. The Staphylinids will be requiring some serious attention to get to species.

Philoscia muscorum

Tachyporus sp, to be identified.

An as yet unidentified larva.

Thinking it would be useful and interesting to see if I could add this moth species to Cemetery Wildlife Watch, the next day, I scooted up to Strowan Woodland Cemetery. I had very limited time but managed to leave the FUN lure armed trap for 20 minutes in the branches of an Oak whilst I deployed the EMP in another part of the cemetery. In 20 minutes six moths were trapped and another two were around the EMP.

Pammene giganteana

I'm guessing I'll find this moth locally wherever there are mature Oaks. I suspect that it is just the lack of folk using pheromones in Scotland that make it appear to be a quite uncommon species.

And I hadn't had a sniff of Saturnia pavonia, despite the EMP lure being in prime habo. It was then that NV reminded me that March is a tad early for this species in Scotland, and checking my own data I found 15th April to be the earliest I'd had it come to lure. So, Louise probably saw a Small Tortoiseshell in the first place!

A good day out at the Butterfly Conservation Spring Gathering in Perth. It was very well organised and there were excellent speakers, an informative and engaging day.

Talk.

Yes, well shutting me up can be the issue.....

However, I gave a talk recently, in support of our Community Woodland, we are trying to record all the species found there. I haven't done a talk for a while, and when I got the projector out it was kaput. Fortunately it is possible to buy quite cheap, but low power projectors online these days. The one I bought for £85 will suffice for small group talks.

Here's the link to the talk slides - https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:c1a9ef69-0611-4a91-92f3-0b1563bcce2b 

 The idea was to encourage recording of wildlife at Comrie Community Woodland in iRecord in an "Activity" and also to support identification with Obsidentify, but helping folk to understand that the AI is fallible and the outcomes need to be checked.

It seemed to go ok, the projector survived the outing, and excess cash over the room rental cost will go to Butterfly Conservation. This because I'm a verifier for BC for Orkney (still) so some of my iRecord learning is down to my involvement with BC.

I heard the first Chiffchaff of the year here the other day. New bird species for the Patch, on consecutive days were Peregrine and Green Woodpecker. The former was found on prey in one of the fields, when it was flushed by a Buzzard stealing its prey, a second bird appeared and they called and squabbled as they headed off. The Green Woody was calling repeatedly from across the Ross somewhere as we were chatting over the garden gate yesterday afternoon. 30 Curlew have been on the sheep fields and Pied Wagtails are re-appearing.

Hand-held bin-scoped, 30mm macro through x8 bins, I don't always carry a telephoto lens these days.

There was a hybrid Hoodie/Carrion in attendance as well. And talking of bins I'm just using the (relatively) cheap Nikons (see a previous post) all the time. They are light, fit in the hand nicely, pin-sharp, focus very close and are just great to use. These are really very nice bins for the what I need them for these days, I guess I could have splashed out on one of the more expensive versions, but I'm not sure how much more gain I would have got for much more money.

We've got an allotment, well a half, quite enough anyway, and had the first couple of trips down there. Of course, rather than dig much or  do any of that I kicked off by delving around in the collapsing fruit cage, looking for species. Winter-cress was new to me. And pulling it up and examining what crawled out was an interesting exercise.

 

Winter-cress

Leiosoma deflexum, a small but common weevil.

There were three Carabids, two Bradycellus species, one of which might be new to me and Amara ovata. There were three Stapylinids, a Stenus that refused to key out but was probably S. ossium, Xantholinus longiventris which keyed out ok, and a Tachyporus. The new book proved its worth with the Tachyporus, a tricky genus identified by the setae on the elytra. The original paper that developed this means of identification was not the easiest to interpret, I've used it quite a few times, but Andrew Duff has done a great job turning this into a dichotomous key.  

Tachyporus identification sorted! T. dispar (slightly embarrassing if I've got that wrong).

Other beetles included Protopion fulvipes, another weevil, and there was a Chrysomelid that Obsidentify insisted was Agelastica alni but it wasn't. Assistance from the very helpful folk at Beetles of B & I FB Group pointed out where I'd gone wrong in the key when I was checking the ID. The correct genus was Altica, a very confusing and difficult genus. However, CW put me on to the genitalia illustrations and a quick dissection got me to Altica lythri, the commonest species of the genus,but a species I had not seen before.

Altica lythri, fortunately a male, here's the aedaegus which proves the ID.

Something of an added bonus was that the Bradycellus harpalinus was infected with a fungi and this would have to be Laboulbenia eubradycelli.

Bradycellus harpalinus infected by Laboulbenia eubradycelli.

There were a few more interesting beasts and plants at the allotment. But I've been out at the Community Woodland finding some things in the last few days, material for the next post. 

Spring is springing, Coltsfoot, Primrose and Common Whitlow-grass all in flower in the last few days.

Colt'sfoot

Common Whitlow-grass.

 

Primrose

The Linn.

Some editing and corrections - 18/03/2025

Many small things

Not much avian news in this quick follow up post. The most notable occurrence in the last week has been the singing of Song Thrushes. From not seeing any all winter pretty much, suddenly in a few days they are singing everywhere. A day or so later and Chaffinch started singing as well. The first Lesser Black-backed Gull of the year put in a brief appearance and my key species to add to the Patch list must be Woodcock. I shall begin crepuscular roaming on suitable evenings shortly.

I found Megabunus diademea on my favourite wall, a wall I scrutinise almost daily that runs up the side of the Earthquake Field. I thought I hadn't seen this species previously, but I recently found an old notebook with quite a few pages of data and there is a record in there, this from the late 80's 90's. There's a bit of interesting data in the notebook, some stuff that I know isn't proven, but some Carabids that I will have done correctly as I was well practised in them in those days. These will boost the P-S List.

Megabunus diamedea

Before I went to London in early February I'd found a Staphylinid beetle in another nearby wall, I'd taken a moss sample and within was the beetle and a false scorpion. I'd had a go at the beetle prior to departure, but I wasn't getting anywhere with Lott, the RES key. So I left the beetle on my desk. I had another go at identifying it recently and again made little headway. The problem was that as it had a small apical section of the maxillary palps I was convinced it was Paederinae and I was keying it presupposing that was the answer, well I think that was going on. I tried again today, keying it with Mike Hackston's key and after a bit of back and forth I came to Othius, and indeed it looks as if it is Othius subuliformis, but I'll need to check that before iRecord-ing.

I've eventually succumbed to the inevitable and ordered Andrew Duff's latest volume of Beetles, Staphylinidae, at some expense, but this is a Family that I like, are underrecorded and apart from the Aleocharines are generally identifiable. Quite a lot of money for a book though.

Aedaegus, I ended up dissecting it as I just couldn't get a match, and of course the aedaegus didn't match any of the Lathrobium species. That did convince me I'd gone off track somewhere.

Othius (thanks for checking my ID CW), perhaps O. subuliformis, 5.5mm

Another interesting beeetle from my favourite wall was this larvae. I had no idea which Family but CA kindly suggested Cantharidae, and possibly Cantharis rustica. A bit of research indicates that this predatory larva is active in winter and is a likely possibility, despite being a quite uncommon species in Perthshire.

Cantharis larva, quite small, c8mm, perhaps Cantharis rustica.

Also on the wall Dicyrtoma fusca, one of those globular Collembula, I'm not sure I've found this species locally previously.

Dicyrtoma fusca

When I walk to the Linn, the swimming hole on Water of Ruchill I pass a good few old Ash trees. It is amazing what you walk past without noticing! I've taken to examining these trees a bit more closely of late and several are host to Lungwort, a really rather spectacular lichen.

Lobaria pulmonaria Lungwort

I ran a light trap for one night in February, the one suitable night I was at home and the temperature was above 4C and there was no torrential down-pour. Good result; a very early Hebrew Character, five Pale Brindled Beauty and 14 Chestnut.

Chestnut

Hebrew Character and a couple of Chestnut

Pale Brindled Beauty

I've been to a couple of cemeteries as well, revisits to Strowan Woodland Cemetery and the White Church cemetery in the village, both visits were productive with quite a few interesting plants in the village cemetery; all good for PSL.

In Strowan I got some nice field images of Anotylus rugosus, a common enough beetle which I used to find very regularly on loch shores in Orkney. Getting field images of such a fast moving beast was pleasing.

Anotylus rugosus new of the Cemetery Wildlife Watch activity, surprisingly.

I need to revisit the site shortly as I also found this:

Andricus quercusradicis, agamic, the colloquial name is Truffle Gall

 

Thanks to SL and PS from the British Galls FB Group for the ID, I really had not a clue. Agamic means that the gall is the product of asexual egg laying by the female wasp. The gall made by the egg laying of mated females is different and has a different colloquial name. There are very few records of this species on the NBN and just one other from Scotland. It was suggested that I go back and take a sample to see if anything emerges in the spring, but these are old galls and to me it looks as if there are emergence holes so the quarry may have departed.

The PSL community is split about counting galls on their lists. Not split about recording these things, just the listing element. In the past I've not counted galls but in order to see the insect/organism it would be necessary to disturb the gall and probably kill the offspring. On balance I would prefer to leave the gall undisturbed and count the species in cases like this. I found Robin's Pincushion  at Tentsmuir last year, the gall of the hymenopteran Diplolepis rosae, and left it be. I'm inclined to add these two to the list to be honest.