Euryusa sinuata Erichson (Staphylinidae) in Hampshire and Kent

摘要

The ant Lasius brunneus was first found in West Kent in 1995 (Jones, 1996) and subsequently I found it in numbers in the grounds of Holwood Mansion (TQ4263) in 1999. At Greenwich Park (TQ3977) workers are frequent on many of the large trees, and on 5 May 2017 a large nest was found within a mature dead but standing beech tree (TQ3876). The frass from the rotting base was sieved and yielded numerous Scydmaenus rufus Müller (Staphylinidae) and a single Euryusa sinuata Erichson, the first for Kent. On the 11th of the same month, I again found this beetle in a large L. brunneus nest inside a long dead but standing rotten hulk of a fir tree, in Shapley Heath Copse, North Hampshire (SU7554), the first for Hampshire and VC 12. The sequence of records of E. sinuata (Denton, 2005) is suggestive of expansion from the Windsor Forest and Burnham Beeches areas alongside the rise in abundance of L. brunneus, though it is not regarded as an obligatory myrmecophile in Europe (Hyman, 1994)