Coleoptera
How to record beetles

Over 4200 species of beetle have been recorded in the UK and new species are added every year. Identifying individual species among them can seem a daunting and tricky experience but thankfully a number of species are readily identifiable and recognisable in the field and should present little difficulty to the beginner (e.g. 7-spot ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata). Many others, however, will need more careful examination of critical features using a hand lens or microscope, and even comparison with reference specimens. Verifying the accuracy of species identifications is a vitally important role that county recorders play and ensures that submitted records can be of the greatest value to the world of nature conservation. Your county recorder may therefore contact you for further details for some records.

The minimum requirement for a record to be accepted to the database is the date the beetle was seen, a named location with grid reference (ideally six figure), the recorders name, who identified the species (if different from recorder), and of course the identification of the species. Please also include reference to any supporting material for your identification such as photographs and/or voucher specimens. While scientific binomials (e.g. Coccinella septempunctata) are the preferred format for names, common names (e.g. 7 spot ladybird) can also be submitted if the former is not known. Identifications only to the level of genus (e.g. Coccinella) or family (e.g. Coccinellidae, the ladybird family) are less useful unless accompanied with a specimen and/or good quality photograph. Other useful information to include with your records would be abundance (e.g. one, several, hundreds, etc), sex (e.g. male, female, mixed), method (e.g. light trap, tree beating, sweep netting, etc) and details about the habitat or particular situation you found the beetle (e.g. swept off chalk grassland, feeding on hawthorn blossom along woodland ride, etc). The identity of the plant species on which your beetle was found can be particularly important for some groups such as weevils and leaf beetles.

For all beetles, the preferred route of receiving records is through the iRecord online recording system. Full instructions on how to use iRecord can be found on the iRecord website. For those not familiar or comfortable using iRecord please send any weevil records via email or post to the weevil recorder and all other beetle records via email to the general beetle recorder. For those without access to email, or when dealing with historic written records, these can be sent to the general beetle recorder but an electronic format is preferred.

Note that limited assistance in the identification of individual specimens can be provided, but please check with either recorder first before sending live or preserved specimens through the post.
Reference materials

The following 4-volumes will eventually form a comprehensive and up to date reference for the identification of all British and Irish beetles, replacing the now outdated Joy that many of us started our beetle careers on. Volume 2 covering the largest family, the rove beetles or Staphylinidae, is still in preparation but should be finished in the next 12-24 months.

Beetles of Britain and Ireland, Volume 1: Sphaeriusidae to Silphidae by Andrew G. Duff, A.G. Duff (Publishing) 2012

Beetles of Britain and Ireland, Volume 2: Staphylinidae by Andrew G. Duff, A.G. Duff (Publishing) Not yet published

Beetles of Britain and Ireland, Volume 3: Geotrupidae to Scraptiidae by Andrew G. Duff, A.G. Duff (Publishing) 2020

Beetles of Britain and Ireland, Volume 4: Cerambycidae to Curculionidae by Andrew G.Duff, A.G. Duff (Publishing) 2016

The Royal Entomological Society have also published a number of excellent handbooks on beetle identification some of which are now available free to download from their website (see link below). Other recommended texts include the various atlases that have been published in recent years including volumes on aquatic beetles, ladybirds, leaf beetles, clown beetles and carrion beetles.

https://www.royensoc.co.uk/publications

Mark Gurney has produced a series of excellent identification guides covering most weevil groups (and the large cantharids) which are freely accessible from the link below

https://www.coleoptera.org.uk/curculionoidea/weevil-identification-guides

For further advice on identification material please get in touch with the general beetle recorder

Useful website links

A new membership-based beetle recording society is due to be launched in 2021 but in the interim if you are interested in beetles, we’d highly recommend your first port of call be the UK Beetle Recording website hosted by the Biological Records Centre (BRC). This contains a variety of resources including links to other helpful websites (look under “Resources” tab and “Links”) and national recording schemes.

https://www.coleoptera.org.uk/home

Social media users can join the Beetles of Britain and Ireland Facebook group where members often provide identification advice and other helpful hints and tips

https://www.facebook.com/groups/889959111032221/

The websites listed below are ones we have found useful in addition to the sites mentioned on the UK Beetle Recording website

The UK Beetles website provides lots of helpful information for beetles generally in the UK

https://www.ukbeetles.co.uk/

“Mikes Insect Keys” website hosts a range of freely downloadable keys for a wide variety of UK beetle families and other insect orders

https://sites.google.com/view/mikes-insect-keys/mikes-insect-keys/keys-for-the-identification-of-british-beetles-coleoptera

For those fluent in German (copying and pasting the text into Google Translate generally works okay for this!) we would also recommend Arved Lompe’s excellent site which includes a range of photos and illustrations of critical features including genitalia dissections. Note that being European, this site includes species not found in the UK and doesn’t cover all UK species but is a good source of information

http://coleonet.de/coleo/html/start.htm

Finally, the following two European websites are a useful source of photos that can help narrow a search down to family and even genus. They are not comprehensive and have the same caveats as Arved’s site above in terms of UK coverage

http://cassidae.uni.wroc.pl/Colpolon/lista%20rodzin.htm

https://www.kerbtier.de/cgi-bin/enFOverview.cgi
Public Surveys
Records from these surveys are not sent to the National Recorder. Their purpose is to provide the general public with details of some locations where they may find these very identifiable species.

You can register, map and view records that have been submitted from the Adnoto Home page. Observer name(s) will be publicly visible, but email addresses and passwords will NOT be visible.

Glow Worms

Submit Glow Worm, Lampyris noctiluca, records via Adnoto.

Tiger Beetles

Submit Green Tiger Beetle, Cicindela campestris, records via Adnoto.