Subject: Big bug
Geographic location of the bug: East Devon uk
Date: 07/03/2018
Time: 04:25 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman: Found this on a oak sleeper about 2 inches long brownish in colour next to a woodland end of June very hot
How you want your letter signed: Cheers steve
Dear Steve,
This is a Longicorn in the family Cerambycidae. Based on images found on Cerambyx and Wikimedia Commons, it looks like Monochamus sartor, but the range listed on the former site is “Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine.” Fera Science Limited in an online pdf entitled Pest Risk Analysis states: “Monochamus sartor is a European wood-boring beetle that has been intercepted frequently in the UK, but has never established.”
Mick, Forestry Commission Tree Health Officer, provided a comment identifying this as a Cerambyx species. Cerambyx cerdo is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species where it states: “European regional assessment: listed as Near Threatened because, although the species is still reasonably widely distributed, the population in most of the European countries is in significant decline and it is dependent upon veteran trees which are also declining in Europe. This is a very specific habitat type which is already highly fragmented and subject to continuing significant decline. Although this species has a relatively wide distribution, its Area of Occupancy is small as it is only found in veteran trees which are scattered across the landscape at very low densities. The rate of loss of veteran trees has not been quantified, but it is significant, and it may potentially exceed 20% in the next ten years (= three generations). Moreover, there is very little regeneration of suitable habitat across the species’ range. Once the existing veteran trees have died, there will be no replacements in many areas. Even if efforts are made now to re-plant appropriate tree species, there may still be a ‘gap’ during which time there would be very little suitable habitat available. Action is urgently needed to protect and appropriately manage existing veteran trees, as well as to ensure that suitable habitat continues to be available in future.“
Hi – @MickBiddleFC – Forestry Commission Tree Health Officer here. I spotted the reference to Monochamus on Twitter, and showed it to our entomologist at Forest Research, because M. sartor is a species we are interested in in a regulatory capacity (it can be a vector for the destructive Pine Wood Nematode).
Happily, our entomologist says that given”the association with oak, the orange highlight at the tip of the elytra, complex sculpturing of the pronotum, lack of pronotal spines, and the long, flared antennae”, he is almost certain that the beetle is not Monochamus, but a Cerambyx species, which would not be of a quarantine concern. We’d be interested to hear if you find any more though!
Hope this is helpful/interesting.
Best wishes
Mick
Thank you very much for the correction. We will update the posting.
No problems! – Dr Max Blake of Forest Research provided the ID.
Best wishes – Mick