On 25 May 2015 while examining pieces of white rotten oak wood, which lay on the ground in South Forest, Windsor Forest, Berkshire SU9370, I noticed a specimen of Scaphisoma running rapidly over the wood and then disappearing. My curiosity was aroused by the fact that the specimen appeared to be larger than specimens of either S. agaricinum (Linnaeus) or S. boleti (Panzer), which I had previously come across in the field. Sieving some of the pieces of bark and fungoid wood yielded only one specimen, which when examined at home turned out to be a male. Using the key in Freude (1971) the specimen (Fig. 1) was identified as Scaphisoma balcanicum Tamanini, a species new to Britain. The extracted aedeagus, measuring 0.74mm in length (Fig. 2), gave a good match to the diagram in the key and crucially the internal sclerites were well sclerotized. A more up to date account of Scaphisoma was then consulted, that by Lobl (2012); this key is more difficult to use and depends largely on comparing the relative lengths of different antennal segments. Even so this key gave the same result. Finally, a visit to the Natural History Museum, London afforded me the opportunity to compare my specimen with those standing under the same name in the European collection; my specimen appeared to be a good match based on external characteristics.
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