Spider Beetle from UK: We think Golden Spider Beetle

bugman

February 18th, 2008 at 1:00 am

Tags

spider beetles, Niptus hololeucus, in the UK
Hi there bug lovers,
In the last 3 or 4 months I have been seeing these beetles in our city flat off and on (I’ve probably seen more than a dozen by now). I have been trying to key them ever since I saw the second one but never got any further than ‘bed bug’, which I know they are not, or assassin bug (which quite frankly is an even worse match). I have collected 5 of them (2mm -5mm, in all kinds of brown shades) in a jar where they ‘didn’t get to eat anything’ for about a month (appart from a dead spider which they seemed to have taken appart) until yesterday when I gave them a bit of old boilt rice (which they also seemed to like). We eat a lot of grain and health foods which means we have a lot of them around but they are being used and replenished regularly and I never noticed any batch to be parasitized. Although I’m sure that we must have a source somewhere I’ve never successfully located one. I have also recently noticed very few and small moth type holes in one of my boyfriend’s t-shirts and don’t know whether that could have been the bugs. The biggest bug (see pic of bug a grain of boilt rice) even has some really nice ornamentation on its back. Without magnification one can’t even see a suture on their backs but I did catch one flying once. Now, roaming through your site I finally found which species they should most likely be!!! I am sure they are some type of spider beetle, most likely Niptus hololeucus. However, no matter which site I find there seem to have been no sightings of this (American) species in the UK so far! If you could help me solve this riddle once and for all I’d be forever grateful! I have also attached pictures of two of my captured bugs. Thank you tons,
Julja
PS.: Since the last time I tried to contact you I have also found that they come crawling out of my downstairs neighbour’s drain sometimes and I have in fact seen one crawling out of one of our drains… ( abit weird for a bug that’s meant to feed on grains, no?)

Hi Julja,
We agree that this is a Spider Beetle, and also that the species looks correct. We googled some key words and found a great website on Spider Beetles with species listed and distributions. The Golden Spider Beetle, Niptus hololeucus, is listed as Cosmopolitan except for some areas of the tropics.

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