Lancashire & Cheshire Entomological Society Founded in 1877 - Charities Reg.: 508729 ____________________________________________________ Newsletter - No. 33 Session 124 Spring 2000 Hello to Everyone: Just a short note to let you know that I (Steve Mc) have re-taken up the editorship of the Society Newsletter in conjunction with Simon Hayhow from Fylde Museum. If anyone has any information, current sitings, events or anecdotes that they would like to share with the LCES Membership, and beyond, then please do send copies to either Simon or myself by snail mail or by e-mail if you are connected. Addresses to send items to are: Simon Hayhow, Curator, Fleetwood Museum, Queens Terrace, Fleetwood, Fylde, Lancashire, FY7 6BT Steve J. McWilliam, 4 Priory Close, Halton, Runcorn, Cheshire, WA7 2BN e-mail: [email protected] Many thanks, we will look forward to an avalanche of mail from you all. Without your help and support this newsletter will become mundane as we both run out of ideas and imagination. Please help. Steve J. McWilliam. Welcome to New Members: Unfortunately I have not kept up with the changes in membership recently, though I promise that Simon and I will get on top of it. In the meantime may I welcome all members who have joined the Society in the last 12 months. We hope you enjoy your membership and find it useful in your entomological studies. New LCES Meetings Venue: Unfortunately, due to the fact that the Liverpool Museum is about to be highly renovated and new facilities provided via the application of almost £34 Million of Lottery monies, the Lancashire & Cheshire Entomological Society has had to arrange for alternative accommodation for the two year period during which attendance at the Museum will be disrupted. This alternative accommodation will come into force in September 1999 when meetings will be held at Frodsham Community Centre, Fluin Lane, Frodsham, Cheshire - Grid Ref.: SJ521776 Biting Midges: A holiday in the west coast of Ireland in 1998 brought us to the archaeological site of the Ceide Fields (pronounced 'Cadie') in County Mayo. In the excellent award-winning visitor centre I was interested to pick up a leaflet on "The Fiercest Animal Here" - The Ceide Midge. This is Culicoides impunctatus, one of the biting midges. Three other species have been recorded but C. impunctatus is by far the commonest. Biting midges are found world-wide in locations as diverse as the tropics and the sub-arctic. About 900 species of the genus (Culicoides) have so far been described. During the summer the midges lay their eggs in batches of 40-50 or so. These hatch in 10 to 14 days, as tiny maggot-like-creatures. They spend the winter feeding on various algae, fungal spores and even other larvae. From _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lancashire & Cheshire Entomological Society (LCES) Newsletter No.: 33 - Spring 2000 Page: 1 of 9 the following May to August, adults emerge from pupae in the ground, mate, and go in search of a blood meal. The midge, if unsuccessful in its search for blood, will actually digest some of her own flight muscle for its protein. This allows her to mature and lay a few of her eggs. She then goes looking again and this time she is vicious in her search for blood. Having located her victim by smell she lands on exposed skin and crawls about, unnoticed, until she finds a soft spot into which she can start to cut with her delightful saw-toothed mouth-parts (the mandibles and maxillae). About 0.1ul (0.00000176 pints) of blood is sucked up while saliva which contains proteins that prevent blood from clotting, is pumped into the wound. Your body reacts to all this by secreting histamine which opens capillaries wider to allow more fighting white blood cells into the site of attack. If, at this stage you haven't squashed her, the midge will feed for 3 to 4 minutes before pulling out, her gorged belly now being swollen and scarlet. The itching and swelling are side-effects of the activity of your body's repair system which is at work healing the site of attack and fighting any infection. Biting becomes less frequent towards late summer as the midge population decreases. On the other hand, maybe it is true what they say about Ceide, that come the first of September the midge loses the sight of one eye and so cannot see their victims so well anymore! The Ceide Midge leaflet indicates that there are tales of the Ceide Midge back to the time of St Patrick. It is said that, having banished the pagan god Crom Dubh to his fort on Dun Briste, St Patrick struck the ground with his staff, creating a sea-stack on which Crom Dubh "was ate to death by the midges", a fate you would wish on nobody, not even a bad god! Simon Hayhow. Lancashire Moth Group: A number of interested people met at Bolton Museum on 24th March 1999 with the aim of co-ordinating recording and taking forward the study of moths within the County of Lancashire. They represented the key societies and groups like Butterfly Conservation, Lancs. & Cheshire Fauna Committee and, of course L. & C. E. S. It was agreed that Steve Palmer, instigator of the meeting, would take on the recording of micros and Steve Garland would become macro recorder. A report on the 1998 season, both macros and micros, has been written by Steve Palmer and included with the Lancashire Butterfly Report, produced jointly by Butterfly Conservation and Lancashire County Museum Service. An encouraging response was received from an appeal for records and it is hoped that the annual report will bring in even more records in the future. It was agreed to keep the group informal at this stage but field meetings, indoor meetings and regular get-togethers in a local hostelry are planned. It is hoped to target field work at scarce or declining species with scientific papers and up to date checklists published in the L. & C. E. S. Proceedings in the future. We would welcome interest from any other moth recorders in Lancashire, experienced or beginners, and you can be put on a mailing list for future meetings. These will be a good chance to share experiences and improve identification skills. Copies of the 1998 Lancashire Butterfly and Moth Report are available from Simon Hayhow, Fleetwood Museum, Queens Terrace, Fleetwood. FY7 6BT if you send an A4 s.a.e. or free if you have contributed records to it. Identifying Insects: A very useful review of basic identification guides or keys written by David Corke appeared in the February 1999 edition of 'British Wildlife' (Vol. 10, No. 3, p.153 - 163). It is very useful if you are just getting started in insects and not sure of the standard work for a particular order. Scaly Cricket Pseudomogolistes squamiger - No longer a British species: The Scaly Cricket, only known from Chesil Beach in Dorset until 1998 discoveries in Devon and The Channel Islands, is probably now Pseudomogolistes vicentae. This was first described as a new species in 1996 based upon specimens collected in Morocco and Portugal. It appears P. squamiger has a range restricted to the Mediterranean region eastwards. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lancashire & Cheshire Entomological Society (LCES) Newsletter No.: 33 - Spring 2000 Page: 2 of 9 New National Odonata Records Committee: The last few years have seen the occurrence of several dragonfly species new to Britain in addition to numerous records of unusual, rare migrants. In the past, records of new species were accepted only on the basis of documentation accompanied by a voucher specimen or, more recently, accompanied by photographic evidence, whilst the acceptance of records relating to other rare migrants often involved an ad hoc process that depended a little on whether or not the observer was well known. With the continued growth of interest in, and the occurrence of, rare migrant dragonflies, such an arrangement has become untenable. A new committee, the Odonata Records Committee (ORC) has therefore been formed to assess records of these species. Resident species, and both red-veined and yellow-winged darters, will not normally fall within the scope of the ORC. The present composition of the new committee is as follows: Adrian Parr (Chairman, Suffolk) David Winland (Dorset) Steven Jones (Cornwall) John & Gill Brook (Kent) John Phillips (Gloucestershire) There is no scheduled time for the committee to meet and records will be considered as an ongoing process. As with the well established procedures for records of rare birds, dragonfly records submitted for consideration should be accompanied by as much supporting evidence as is available, including field sketches and photographs (though these are not a prerequisite for acceptance), to the Chairman of the ORC at the address below. Results of the ORC's decisions, news and announcements will be published in the Journal of the British Dragonfly Society and in Atropos. Biological Recording & Local Record Centre Update: The Local Record Centre project is still moving ahead, albeit slowly. As at February 2000 the company to run the LRC has been formed (so far with 2 Directors), the LRC has been named "rECOrd" (note the ECO in the name), and the position of manager of the Centre is just about to be advertised. Watch this space. The software to support the Local Record Centres across the country "Recorder-2000" is currently in Beta Test and copies of this test CD can be obtained for free from Eva Leck at JNCC in Peterborough. She can be contacted by e-mail on: [email protected] or by telephone at: (01733) 562626.