Natural England Commissioned Report NECR235 A review of the status of the beetles of Great Britain The clown beetles and false clown beetles - Histeridae and Sphaeritidae Species Status No. 32 First published 30th August 2017 www.gov.uk/natural -england Foreword Natural England commission a range of reports from external contractors to provide evidence and advice to assist us in delivering our duties. The views in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of Natural England. Background Decisions about the priority to be attached This report should be cited as: LANE, S.A, 2017. A to the conservation of species should be review of the status of the beetles of Great Britain - The clown beetles and false clown beetles - based upon objective assessments of the Histeridae and SphaeritidaeNatural England. degree of threat to species. The Commissioned Reports, Number235 internationally-recognised approach to undertaking this is by assigning species to one of the IUCN threat categories using the IUCN guidelines. This report was commissioned to update the national threat status of beetles within the Histeridae and Sphaeritidae. It covers all species in these groups, identifying those that are rare and/or under threat as well as those which are non-threatened and non-native. Reviews for other invertebrate groups will follow. Natural England Project Manager - Jon Webb, [email protected] Author- Steve A. Lane Contractor - Steve A. Lane Keywords - Histeridae, Sphaeritidae, clown beetles, false clown beetles, invertebrates, red list, IUCN, status reviews Further information This report can be downloaded from the Natural England Access to Evidence Catalogue: http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/ . For information on Natural England publications contact the Natural England Enquiry Service on 0300 060 3900 or e-mail [email protected]. This report is published by Natural England under the Open Government Licence - OGLv3.0 for public sector information. You are encouraged to use, and reuse, information subject to certain conditions. For details of the licence visit Copyright. Natural England photographs are only available for non commercial purposes. If any other information such as maps or data cannot be used commercially this will be made clear within the report. ISBN 978-1-78354-436-3 © Natural England and other parties 2017 CONTENTS 1 Introduction to the Species Status project 1 1.1 The Species Status project 1 1.2 The Status Assessments 1 1.3 Species Status and Conservation Action 1 2 Introduction to the beetle reviews 2 2.1 Taxa selected for this review 2 2.2 Previous reviews 3 2.3 This Review 5 3 The IUCN threat categories and selection criteria 6 3.1 Summary of the 2001 Threat Categories 6 3.2 Application of the Guidelines to the Histeridae and Sphaeritidae 9 4 GB Rarity Status categories and criteria 12 5 Methods and sources of information 13 5.1 Introduction 13 5.2 Date Sources 13 6 The Assessments 14 6.1 The Data Table 14 6.2 Category columns introduced in this Review 15 6.3 Other Considerations 16 7 Downgraded, upgraded and excluded species 16 7.1 Downgraded and Upgraded 16 7.2 Excluded species 18 8 Format of the species accounts 20 8.1 Information on the species accounts 20 8.2 The species name 20 8.3 Identification 20 8.4 Distribution 21 8.5 Habitat and Ecology 21 8.6 Status 23 8.7 Threats 24 8.8 Management and conservation 26 8.9 Published sources 27 9 Acknowledgements 28 10 Species listed by IUCN status category 30 11 Species listed by GB Rarity Status category 30 12 Criteria used for assigning species to IUCN threat categories 32 13 List of Threatened, Nationally Rare and Nationally Scarce species 33 14 The data sheets 34 15 References and further reading 55 Appendix 1 61 Appendix 2 70 1 Introduction to the Species Status project 1.1 The Species Status project The Species Status project is a recent initiative, providing up-to-date assessments of the threat status of taxa using the internationally accepted Red List guidelines developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) IUCN Standards and Petitions Subcommittee, 2014); (IUCN, 2012a; 2012b). It is the successor to the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) Species Status Assessment project (http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-3352) which ended in 2008. This publication is one in a series of reviews to be produced under the auspices of the new project. Under the Species Status project, the UK’s statutory nature conservation agencies, specialist societies and NGOs will initiate, resource and publish Red Lists and other status reviews of selected taxonomic groups for Great Britain. All publications will explain the rationale for the assessments made. The approved threat statuses will be entered into the JNCC spreadsheet of species conservation designations (http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-3408). 1.2 The status assessments This Review adopts the procedures recommended for the regional application of the IUCN threat assessment guidelines which can be viewed at IUCN (2012b). http://cmsdocs.s3.amazonaws.com/keydocuments/Reg_Guidelines_en_web%2Bcover%2Bba ckcover.pdf Section 3 and Appendix 1 provide further details. This is a two-step process, the first identifying the taxa threatened in the region of interest using information on the status of the taxa of interest in that region (IUCN, 2012), the second amending the assessments where necessary to take into account interaction with populations of the taxon in neighbouring regions (IUCN Standards and Petitions Subcommittee, 2014; http://cmsdocs.s3.amazonaws.com/RedListGuidelines.pdf). In addition, but as a separate exercise, the Great Britain Rarity System, used for assessing rarity and based solely on distribution, is used alongside the IUCN system. 1.3 Species status and conservation action Sound decisions about the priority to attach to conservation action for any species should primarily be based upon objective assessments of the degree of threat to the survival of a species. This is conventionally done by assigning the species to one of the IUCN threat categories although the IUCN (2014) point out that a category of threat is often not sufficient to determine priorities for conservation action. However, the assessment of threats to survival should be separate and distinct from the subsequent process of deciding which species require action and what activities and resources should be allocated. 1 2. Introdcution to the Beetles review Many beetles are important ecological indicators (much more refined than most plants) due to their dependency on complex factors such as vegetation structure, microclimate and substrate. They are also found in a much wider range of habitats than some of the more popular groups of insects such as butterflies, dragonflies and bumblebees. Monitoring their status and abundance can provide a very useful indication of ecological ‘health’, in a way that monitoring plants, birds, bats or other insect groups, for example, may not. The Histeridae and Sphaeritidae are a well-defined and easily recognisable group of beetles. However, difficulty can be experienced with the identification of some of the genera. Many of the species are to be found only in dung, decomposing fungi or carrion and many are also of very similar form and are unicolorous black, making them relatively unpopular with coleopterists compared to groups such as the larger leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae), weevils (Curculionoidea), stag beetles and chafers (Lucanidae, Scarabaeidae) and longhorn beetles (Cerambycidae). 2.1 Taxa selected for this Review Table 1 summarises the 54 taxa included in this Review. Nomenclature follows Duff (2012), except for the recent addition to the British fauna Platysoma elongatum (Thunberg, 1787). These taxa have very recently become the subject of a British national recording scheme, coordinated by the Biological Records Centre. The work of this scheme includes the collation of information from the following data sources: • historic records published in local and national journals; • published county reviews; • voucher specimens in local and national museums; • records arising from the activity of the biological recording community. Table 1. Distribution across higher taxonomic groupings of the taxa selected for review. Order Family Species Coleoptera Sphaeritidae Sphaerites glabratus (Fabricius, 1792) Histeridae Abraeus granulum Erichson, 1839 Abraeus perpusillus (Marsham, 1802) Acritus nigricornis (Hoffmann, J., 1803) Acritus homoeopathicus Wollaston, 1857 Aeletes atomarius (Aubé, 1842) Atholus bimaculatus (Linnaeus, 1758) Atholus duodecimstriatus (Schrank, 1781) Carcinops pumilio (Erichson, 1834) Dendrophilus punctatus (Herbst, 1792) Dendrophilus pygmaeus (Linnaeus, 1758) Dendrophilus xavieri Marseul, 1873 Epierus comptus Erichson, 1834 Gnathoncus buyssoni Auzat, 1917 Gnathoncus communis (Marseul, 1862) Gnathoncus nannetensis (Marseul, 1862) Gnathoncus rotundatus (Kugelann, 1792) Haeterius ferrugineus (Olivier, 1789) 2 Halacritus punctum (Aubé, 1843) Hister bissexstriatus Fabricius, 1801 Hister illigeri Duftschmid, 1805 Hister quadrimaculatus Linnaeus, 1758 Hister quadrinotatus Scriba, 1790 Hister unicolor Linnaeus, 1758 Hololepta plana (Sulzer, 1776) Hypocaccus crassipes (Erichson, 1834) Hypocaccus dimidiatus (Illiger, 1807) Hypocaccus metallicus (Herbst, 1792) Hypocaccus rugiceps (Duftschmid, 1805) Hypocaccus rugifrons (Paykull, 1798) Kissister minimus (Laporte, 1840) Margarinotus brunneus (Fabricius, 1775) Margarinotus marginatus