18
The Essex Naturalist
Essex Heteroptera: report for 1996
Peter Kirby
21 Gm/ton Avenue, Netherton, Peterborough PE3 9PD.
Despite a fairly small total of Heteroptera records received in 1996, there was
a number of significant interest. The most important are as follows:
Arenocoris falleni (Schilling) (Coreidae): Alphamstone sand pit, TL8735, in
a pan trap operated from the 18th to 21st July 1996, coll. C.W. Plant, det. P.
Kirby. New to Essex. It is surprising that this species should apparently never
have been recorded from the county before. It is admittedly always a fairly
local insect. Its chief foodplant is common storksbill, and it probably needs
fairly large populations of the host to survive, which restricts its occurrence
and would certainly lead to considerable localisation in Essex, but it seems to
be a fairly mobile insect and is quite widespread in other south-eastern coastal
counties.
Bathysolen nubilus (Fallen) (Coreidae): Walthamstow Marsh, TQ353877,
1996, D.J.P. Miller. Though there are other recent records from urban and
urban-fringe sites in the same general area, this is a nationally scarce species of
quite restricted distribution in Britain, and a further record is worth
publishing.
Stictopleurus abutilon (Rossi) (Rhopalidae): Essex Filter Beds, TQ361867,
14th August 1996, D.J.P. Millet; one at m.v. light. New to Essex. There are a
number of old records of this species from southern England, but most were
probably of vagrants or temporarily established populations. The species has
recently been recorded from several locations in the south of England, and
appears to have established breeding populations in the relatively mild climate
of recent years. This is the first record of the genus from Essex. The
correspondence of A.M. Massee at Monks Wood Experimental Station
includes a record of S. punctatonervosus from near Chelmsford in June 1950,
taken from the records of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union, which is
presumably the source of the record for the county given in Massee (1955).
Dolling (1978), in a review of the genus in Britain, also mentions this as a
"published record not supported by specimens". The recorder was Mr J.H.
Flint, but the record is based on a misidentification of Rhopalus subrufus
(Gmelin), and is annotated as such in Mr Flint's diaries (S. Foster, pers.
comm.).
Drymus latus Douglas & Scott (Lygaeidae): Walthamstow Marsh,
TQ353877, 2nd September 1996, D.J.P. Miller; Yardley Hill, TQ381958, 2nd
September 1996, D.J.P. Miller. A nationally scarce species, and therefore
considered worthy of recording, though its image of rarity is beginning to slip a
little with a steady increase in records. Though unquestionably very local,