Beetles are a large and varied group of insects. There are two YNU interest groups involved, one looking after the group as a whole, and a second specialising in a family of rove beetles known as Aleocharinae.

Recorders:

R.J.Marsh  11 Crusader Drive, Sprotbrough, Doncaster DN5 7RX. E-mail: bob.marsh@talktalk.net Tel: 01302 788411 (Coleoptera excluding Aleocharinae)

M.L.Denton   77 Hawthorn Terrace, Crosland Moor, Huddersfield, HD4 5RP Tel: 01484 646990 (Coleoptera: Aleocharinae)

An Atlas of Yorkshire Coleoptera - Part 1

Bob Marsh has written the first section of an Atlas of Yorkshire Coleoptera. The document is available at the link below. Please be aware that it is around 10Mb in size so may take some time to open/download.

An Atlas of Yorkshire Coleoptera-part 1 - Carabidae 091018

A PRELIMINARY CHECKLIST OF THE COLEOPTERA OF WATSONIAN YORKSHIRE

Introduction and historical notes

This checklist is based on the Coleoptera records held in the database of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union by R J Marsh and M L Denton.

Britain, under a system devised in Watson (1883) and subsequently documented by Dandy (1969), was divided into convenient recording areas. Thus Yorkshire was divided into vice-counties, numbered 61 to 65 inclusive, and notwithstanding fairly recent county boundary reorganisations and changes, the vice-county system remains a convenient one for recording purposes.

Until 1990 all Coleoptera records were held and maintained by John Flint using a system originally begun by W.J.Fordham and continued by E.G.Bayford, G.B.Walsh, W.O.Steel and others. The records were kept on loose sheets on a species basis, and, owing to the increasing volume of and detail within the records this methodology clearly could not be maintained, especially when site based information was required from the database. After 1990 the entire body of these records was transferred to a computerised database system, completed in 1995, and employing the Recorder 3 program, developed by Dr Stuart Ball of JNCC. This program allowed an extensive range of rapid information retrieval, of which the old paper system was totally incapable. In 2003 the database was transferred to Recorder 2002, a successor to Recorder 3. Recorder 2002 (sponsored by JNCC and written by Dorset Software) used the species status categories and Coleoptera checklist of Recorder 3. There will be no further upgrades, dictionary additions or development work carried out by JNCC on Recorder 3, or by JNCC or Dorset Software on Recorder 2002, so utilisation of the Duff (2008) checklist and any revisions of the national status of species will involve a move to Recorder 6, the successor to Recorder 2002.

The original paper records are now archived at the YNU document store at NEYEDC in York.

In the Yorkshire checklist, the national status is included where appropriate, and the definitions of status categories (JNCC, 1992) and (JNCC, 1994) remain those included in Recorder 3, and are as follows:

RDB1 – endangered – taxa in danger of extinction and whose survival is unlikely if causal factors continue operating.

RDB2 – vulnerable – taxa believed likely to move into the Endangered category in the near future if the causal factors continue operating.

RDB3 – rare – taxa with small populations that are not at present endangered or vulnerable, but are at risk.

RDBK – species assigned Red Data Book category but with biological information insufficiently known.

Notable A – species which do not fall within the RDB categories but are thought to occur in 30 or fewer 10km squares of the National Grid, or for less well-recorded groups, within seven or fewer vice-counties.

Notable B – species which do not fall within the RDB categories but thought to occur in between 31 and 100 10km squares of the National Grid.

Naturalised – species which having been recently imported have established themselves, at least for the present, in the wild.

Local – species that are rather confined owing to habitat requirements.

Common – species considered ubiquitous.

“p” – a provisional assignment as detailed within RECORDER 3, and attached whilst more biological information becomes available.

Please be aware that national species status designations are now considered by workers in entomology to be, in many cases, out of date and in need of review, in the light of current knowledge of species distribution. In the meantime the status designations in Recorder 6 remain those of Recorder 3, as this is all we have to work with.

Aims of the Yorkshire checklist

For some time coleopterists in Yorkshire have been requesting a working checklist of species so far known to have occurred in the county.

The checklist may be viewed as a plea for Yorkshire records of species that do not appear in this checklist. It is hoped that Coleoptera workers in other parts of Britain and in organisations other than the YNU will inform the authors of Yorkshire Coleoptera records in their possession, so that these may be added to our checklist.

The checklist will serve to highlight areas of the fauna that are underworked, and it will serve to demonstrate those underworked areas of the county, particularly VC65.

As time goes by, new species will hopefully be added to the County list and this checklist will be updated periodically, and I intend to update the checklist on an annual basis.

The latest edition of the checklist (due March 2011)

The latest edition of the checklist that was posted in the summer of 2008 has seen many additions and deletions of species for the five vice-counties. I have been assisted in this by YNU entomologists and others, including R. Crossley, P. Kendall, W. Dolling, F. E. Kenington, W. A. Ely, E. J. Smith, D. Whitely, J. Hancox and D. Bateson who have all kindly submitted records and made comments on the checklist. Special thanks are due to M.L Denton for his work in Aleocharinae recording and the revision of the nomenclature of the Yorkshire records (see below).

Considering what species to delete from the list has been more problematic. I have used the recent atlas publications by Luff (1998) and Cox (2007) to assist this process. I have examined records in the Carabidae and Chrysomelidae and where there is a single record from the county and where consideration of known status and distribution puts that record in serious doubt or is known to be erroneous, then that record has been deleted from the checklist by me. Some species records have been reassigned to another vice-county. Vice-county boundaries as issued by NBN are now incorporated into the mapping feature in the YNU copy of Recorder 6, and a few records that were originally assigned to, say, VC65 have now been placed in VC64 owing to errors in the original site data inputs which were due to me. Some VC boundaries particularly in the Ripon and York areas are very complicated, where several VCs meet, and one needs to be very careful when assigning vice-county designations to some sites in those areas. Other important areas where the accuracy of records will have to be reviewed lie in the Cantharidae and Curculionidae. The Yorkshire checklist now contains a Comments column where I consider useful information may be put. Please inform either of us (MLD or RJM) if users of the list consider some comment should be added to a line. The work of tidying up the county list is ongoing and open-ended.

There is now the much more serious problem of nomenclatural change. Coleoptera records for the YNU are now stored in Recorder 6, and recently a new beetle checklist incorporating a huge number of major taxonomic changes has emerged – see Duff (2008). This new national checklist is used as a “Preferred Checklist” in Recorder 6, and may be viewed at www.coleopterist.org.uk/checklist.htm During 2009 and 2010 I shall be working toward the production of an amended checklist utilising fully the new nomenclature. In the meantime please be aware of the above notes when consulting the YNU checklist.

References

JNCC, 1992. Hyman, P.S., and Parsons, M.S. A Review of the scarce and threatened Coleoptera of Great Britain. Part 1. Peterborough.

JNCC, 1994. Hyman, P.S., and Parsons, M.S. A Review of the scarce and threatened Coleoptera of Great Britain. Part 2. Peterborough.

Dandy J.E. 1969. Watsonian Vice-counties of Great Britain. The Ray Society, London.

Cox, M.L. 2007. Atlas of the Seed and Leaf Beetles of Britain and Ireland. Pisces Publications, London.

Duff, A.G. 2008. Coleoptera Checklist of the British Isles, 2008 Edition. Wells, Somerset. Available at the Coleopterist website www.coleopterist.org.uk

Luff, M.L. 1998. Provisional atlas of the ground beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) of Britain. BRC, ITE, Monks Wood PE17 2LS.

Pope, R.D. 1977. Kloet & Hincks. A Check List of British Insects. Part 3: Coleoptera and Strepsiptera. Second revised edition. Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects. 11 (3), pp. xiv+105.

Watson, H.C. 1883. 2nd. ed. Topographical Botany. Quaritch, London.

R.J.Marsh, 26 October 2009