Sarah Arnold

A top-down image of 12 various moths on a green egg carton.

Do you do moth trapping in the UK? We'd love your help! 💡

At @ukceh.bsky.social we're training & testing AI to detect multiple moths in a single image.

Send us top-down photos of multiple moths on egg trays to support this work.

More info & form: forms.gle/e3HzBPEd7RVV...

#mothsmatter #TeamMoth

Sorry! Forgot alt-text. Alt-text = Close-up images of a small (<5mm) long mostly-black beetle in a glass tube, in a human hand. The beetle has red-brown legs, as well as red head and thorax.

I checked the common mallow & sure enough, there was a Podagrica sp. In this case, P. fuscicornis, the red-legged one. I need to do a thread about the Podagricas of common mallow in the UK as they're more interesting than you'd expect for tiny flea beetles...

#KentNature #Kentomology #Coleoptera

A pinkish purple thistle flower with a bright yellow crab spider sitting underneath looking quite obvious and not at all cryptic!

I am not sure if this Misumena thought it was well-camouflaged... [3/]

#KentNature #Kentomology #Spider

A black beetle with distinctive orange shoulders, on a brick wall that has holes in the mortar. (Sitaris muralis.)

Foreground shows at least 3 black beetles with orange shoulders in a big pile. They all have weird reduced elytra that don't fully cover the wings or abdomen. Background shows another beetle. All are on concrete with sandy surface.

A very distended S. muralis in a glass tube. Abdomen is dark brown, rest of beetle is black apart from distinctive yellow-orange shoulders. Beetle is right way up but legs scrunched under it as dead.

A hole in brickwork/mortar with spider webbing forming a tunnel, in which a large dark coloured spider sits among at least 2 dead Sitaris muralis beetles.

A particular feature of the site is that is has a population of Sitaris muralis that was first noted by @baldbirder.bsky.social in 2024 and was back in force this year. The beetles parasitise nests of Anthophora plumipes. [2/]

A very cute small bee with big green eyes sitting on the tip of a person's finger (Anthophora quadrimaculata)

A large bee on a yellow Asteraceae type flower. She has brown-golden hair on her thorax and her hind legs are covered in spectacular yellow-golden flowing hairs. (Dasypoda hirtipes)

A fairly large bee in a petri dish, with a black and fairly unhairy abdomen upper side, but you can just about see the underside has thick, stiff orange hair (black at the tip) for pollen carrying. Her thorax is hairy light brown and has lots of yellow pollen on. (Megachile willughbiella)

Yesterday's @kentfieldclub.bsky.social meeting was at @niab-uk.bsky.social's East Malling site, which has orchards of various ages and management, and wildflower areas (though the visitor car park was also biodiversity-rich).

The site has a wide diversity of bees! [1/]
#KentNature #bees #entomology

Sometimes when they go funny colours like that it's because they have either a virus or a parasitoid inside!

Hoverfly. I think Eristalis pertinax maybe?

This is amazing!

A tiny, oval beetle on a leaf. The beetle has brown elytra with a darker, horseshoe-shaped mark at the centre.

A wet day for our field meeting last Saturday, but several members braved the weather. Amongst the species recorded was this Horseshoe Ladybird Clitostethus arcuatus, found and photographed by @sejarnold.bsky.social. #beetles #coleoptera #ladybirds #microladybird

While Polistes spp. (especially P. dominula) are pretty common in nearby bits of continental Europe, they haven't really established in the UK much yet. But there is increasing evidence of a bit of breeding in southern England. Last saw an individual near Ashford some years back...

The white frothy "platform" of flowers from an Apiaceae plant, on which a medium-sized wasp is sitting. The wasp is black and yellow striped, but a bit more gracile and leggy than a "normal" Vespula. This individual has a partly-crushed abdomen, with T1 and T2 both distorted badly.

The white frothy "platform" of flowers from an Apiaceae plant, on which a medium-sized wasp is sitting. The wasp is black and yellow striped, but a bit more gracile and leggy than a "normal" Vespula. This individual has a partly-crushed abdomen, with T1 and T2 both distorted badly, and the insides partly visible at the T3 join.

The white frothy "platform" of flowers from an Apiaceae plant, on which a medium-sized wasp is sitting. The wasp is black and yellow striped, but a bit more gracile and leggy than a "normal" Vespula. This individual has a partly-crushed abdomen.

The white frothy "platform" of flowers from an Apiaceae plant, on which a medium-sized wasp is sitting. The wasp is black and yellow striped, but a bit more gracile and leggy than a "normal" Vespula. This individual has a partly-crushed abdomen, with T1 and T2 both distorted badly.

Very heavily damaged Polistes sp. spotted on the Niab East Malling site on Friday - have to admire how it was still foraging despite the serious damage on the abdomen.
#KentNature #Kentomology #Entomology #KentInsects #PaperWasp #Polistes #Wasp

I'm finding caterpillars in spring every couple of years now in Kent, so wouldn't be surprised if London population was a mixture of eclosed-in-the-city and migratory individuals. Not sure what % of each though!

A pale purple-pink pompom of a thistle on which a large bee with absolutely splendid fluffy bright orange pantaloons perches. She is otherwise quite chunky, with a black and white striped abdomen and golden hairs on the thorax and she contrasts quite nicely against the flower.

A yellow cluster of ragwort flowers, a little bit tatty, on which a skinny, weird-looking moth with orange-scaled almost waspy wings sits. Its body is black with some white markings and its wings are narrow so it looks more like a wasp than a normal moth really.

A brown/orange patterned butterfly sitting among dry grass.

Some photos from today, all at or close to home: Pantaloon bee (Dasypoda hirtipes), Fiery clearwing, Wall brown. #insect #entomology #KentMoths #KentNature @kentfieldclub.bsky.social

Oh wow, that's a pretty one. Certainly looks like a flea beetle. They really can jump impressively!

A fairly plump green caterpillar with a white stripe all down its side, and a tail-horn (what is it called?) that is blue with an orangey-yellow tip. Sitting on hedge bedstraw (tiny white flowers).

Hummingbird hawkmoth caterpillar in North Kent, in a wildflower patch allowed to grow tall on a new housing estate! @kentfieldclub.bsky.social #KentMoths #UKMoths

That's a challenge, as my hamster is also called Bob. Will he accept Bobbie or will we just have to navigate multiple household Bobs?

A long, dark green and hairy leaf on which a small, slightly shiny, oval-shaped beetle is sitting. The beetle is kind of golden-brown colour and has large black femora (just visible). There is minor feeding damage on the leaf surface.

Information about it says it also uses Echium vulgare. I'd not seen it on our Echium, but I had a look today, and there are a small number of individuals on it. They seem to be all/mostly the pale morph (or young individuals?), so that's interesting. [7/7]

In the UK, L. quadriguttatus seems to be quite rare; NBN only has a few dozen records for the whole country. species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNS...

However, I'd hazard a guess that it's underrecorded because prob. not that many people get curious about flea beetles hanging out on houndstongue! [6/]

A green, hairy and long leaf, pinched between fingers, on which a small 3mm long beetle is perched precariously. The beetle is black and shiny, has large femora for jumping, and four orange splotches on its elytra. The leaf has many brown-edged, irregular holes from herbivore (beetle!) feeding damage.

L. quadriguttatus feeds on leaves & roots of houndstongue. In N. America there have been attempts to use L. quadriguttatus as biocontrol, but the feeding makes a mess of the plants without actually killing them or stopping them from reproducing, so probably not a suitable control method. [5/]

In the UK, the host plant houndstongue is native and is a nice plant that is beloved of Bombus pratorum, among other things. In the USA/Canada, houndstongue is invasive and considered a bit of a problem. [4/]

I've also seen a number of brown ones. In cabbage stem flea beetle, brown individuals are part of normal variation. I am not sure if for L. quadriguttatus it's just that these are teneral and they get their normal colouration later? [3/]

L. quadriguttatus is a flea beetle species that particularly likes houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale). It's pretty cool (and distinctive, as flea beetles go) because it has 4 orangey splotches on its elytra. [2/]

Close up of a tiny beetle (3mm long?) inside a glass tube being held in a human hand. The beetle has large hind femora for jumping, and otherwise is black and shiny, with long antennae, and four orange-red spots on its elytra.

Meet my new friend-species and current favourite flea beetle, the houndstongue flea beetle Longitarsus quadriguttatus. (Is it OK to have a favourite flea beetle?) [1/]

That feeling when you spent a chunk of the day going through old pan trap samples (making good use of by-catch!) but the smell of old pan trap samples seems to get stuck in your nose for the next 12 hours. #Entomology #SmellOfScience

Weirdly, my eye can't stop being drawn to the antennae, which for some reason have an asymmetrical banding pattern.

There are some seriously cool-looking Orthoptera in the world and this is definitely one of them!

In about a week we (Biological Sciences @ Monash Uni in Melbourne, Australia) will be opening a search for 3 (!!!) permanent academic positions (40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service) at Lecturer/Senior Lecturer. 1 Genomics, 2 Ecology. Please share, email me, DM, follow, send carrier pigeons…

(We have a lot of native plants in the garden, but some were bought online and delivered, and others are self-seeds or from stuff we emptied out of our trouser turnups after long walks, and a few are serendipitous purchases from nature reserves with a plant sale section for 50p.)

Not an insurmountable barrier, but...availability of native plants as plug/baby plants in some cases. The nearest garden centre sells mostly fancy roses, pelargoniums, petunias and stuff. To find UK native plants you may have to go to more specialised garden centres/nurseries for good range.

Exhausting that we now have to check that plausible-sounding references are even real now. Encountering similar problems with other types of submitted written work.