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Tuesday, January 1, 2019

First new species of 2019 and it's.....

...not a beetle!

I managed a quick 20 minutes beating ivy and mistletoe in the garden today. 7 spot Ladybird and Dromius agilis plus lots of diptera ended up in the tray. Also several of these bugs.

I don't have any literature on these and after failing to picture match on the British Bugs website I put my usual call out on twitter to Tristan Bantock who suggested the Minute Pirate bug Cardiastethus fasciiventris. And at 2.2mm it's pretty minute!




This species has a mainly English distribution but also seems to occur in eastern Wales.


Can't find too much else about it online apart from that it's saproxylic i.e. depends on dead and decaying wood. Plenty of that in my garden!!

Anyway, off to a start albeit a slow one.

Happy New Year.

I'll leave you with this from one of my favourite albums of 2018.




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