Bob Foreman and the SxBRC have updated the excellent
Sussex Shield Bug Atlas with all our records. I have done a wee bit of analysis to show how much things have changed in the last year. It surprised me just how much better recorded shield bugs (and allies) are now we have the atlas. It's already out of date though, as yesterday I recorded
Bordered Shieldbug Legnotus limbosus new to my home 1 km square as I was walking to the shops. Here is a rubbish phone shot.
Oh and here (and the top photo) are shots I took of one I collected in the suction sampler from Levin Down this week, first record there since 1997. You can see the detail on the clypeus here that separates it from the scarcer Lengotus picipes.
Anyways, back to the analysis.
Here is the overview before
And after the update
First off, the total number of species per 10 km square rose by over 10% from 15.7 to 17.3, That's pretty cool. Around 63% of 10 km squares showed increased species-richness of shield bugs.
The total number of records per 10 km square rose by nearly 22% from 80.8 to 98.3. That's really impressive. Around 90% of 10 km squares showed some level of shield bug recording in the last year. The biggest jump was in the most recorded square which went from from 676 to 777 records over the last year.
The most species-rich 10 km squares now contain 31 species, these being around Hastings and immediately north of Hastings. I wonder if this is mainly due to Derek Binns? Can we beat 31 species I wonder? The biggest jump is the square in the far north west of West Sussex where the partial square bordering Hampshire went from two species to 13 species in the last year. Who is recording in this part of the world I wonder?
Have a look at the rise of the Western Conifer Seedbug. It's now been recorded in nearly as many squares as Green Shieldbug and Dock Bug and has already been recorded in two more squares than Hairy Shieldbug?! Partly this is down to its striking appearance, people love to record it on iRecord!
I leave you with one of my favourites, the Rhombic Leatherbug which I have added new to the square containing East Head already this year. Happy shieldbug recording! By the way I am thinking of year listing Heteroptera next year as I have had so much fun doing the spiders if anyone is up for it.
Do you get your abutilons confused with your punctatonervosus? Then look no further. Looking like a couple of gormless smiling evil aliens from Dr Who, are the two species of Scticopleurus we have in the UK. On the left we have Stictopleurus abutilon and on the right Sticopleurus punctatonervosus. Now in Sussex at least punctatonervosus is much commoner than abutilon. I have 23 and 3 records respectively. I see punctatonervosus all over but in huge numbers on Common Fleabane. It's all over Knepp and Butcherlands for example. I have never seen abutilon in in numbers like this though and don't know about any particular plant associations. How do you tell them apart though?
Here we have S. abutilon. There is a curved pale ridge with no dark punctures present running almost parallel to the leading edge of the pronotum. As these are tough bugs, you can hold them in your fingers and see this with a hand lens easy enough.
And the commoner
S. punctatonervosus which basically doesn't have the unpunctured pale ridge.
So that's that sorted then. As these two rhopalid bugs are both on the
Sussex Shieldbug Atlas, you've got no excuse to not record them now. I await the flood of records. Somehow I don't think I will get double figures of these two in a year on iRecord (unlike the double figures of Western Conifer Seedbug I am getting on a nearly daily basis now).
Bugs. Picking up the slack in late summer after the beetles have abandoned us. I found myself on a site today in a fairly under-recorded area of West Sussex. Here is an example of how under-recorded it is; the last sweep I made this morning had no less than SIX shield bugs and squash bugs in it, as well as
Stictopleurus punctonervosus. A quick look on the
Sussex Shieldbug Atlas showed me that FIVE of these species were new records for the 10 km square!!! So there are lots of gaps to fill in, why don't you head to an area near you and get sweeping/beating? This haul was from simply sweeping Bristly Ox-tongue, Prickly Lettuce, Fleabane and Yorkshire-fog. The six species were the above
Forget-me-not Shieldbug here hiding under some
Round-leaved Fluellen, Sloe Bug (new),
Brassic Bug below (new),
Dock Bug (new),
Green and
Tortoise.

Speaking of tortoises, the site was thick with fleabane so I was expecting there might be some of the Nationally Rare Pilemostoma fastuosa. In fact I swept three. It's a beetle by the way, they haven't all abandoned us.
And in a little corner, a rather nice arable patch with both fluellens, Broad-leaved Spurge and Hairy Buttercup.
Yesterday was an epic day! I did visit 4 of the Iping and Stedham invertebrate survey. I picked up some 50 species in the first 30 minutes and this included some great charismatic species such as Woodland Grasshopper, Bee-wolf, Heather Shieldbug, Alydus calcaratus, Phytocoris insignis, Thomisus onistus, Vespula rufa, Mottled Grasshopper, Araneus sturmi (the 208th spider recorded there), Xysticus kochi (the 209th spider recorded there), Pilophorus clavatus (the first West Sussex record since 1997, my first and the first on an SWT reserve), Hydroporus melanarius (new to me and all SWT reserves) etc etc...and that was just on Stedham.
However, when we returned to a different area of Stedham later in the day with our Conservation Committee, I got rather excited when we stood in a purpose-made scrape looking for Marsh Club-moss. A tiny plume was barely visible in the vegetation. Having seen Sundew Plume before at Graffham Common last year, I know how easy it is to lose sight of one. So when I yelled "NOBODY MOVE" I was pleased to see that everyone ignored me and pounced on the moth! I managed to miss it with my net, only to find I had caught it all along and there were actually two individuals present! So all the Sundew Plumes recorded in Sussex in the last 20 years have been recorded on SWT reserves in areas that are actively managed! This shows how important early-successional habitat management is. This species couldn't survive without this long term. Grazing alone just wouldn't be enough to keep the M16 and sundews going.
I mentioned the Heather Shieldbug above. This is a real oddity. I have swept and swept and swept Heather at Iping and Stedham over the last ten years and I have never seen it before there (it was last recorded there in 2015 but not by me). Going through my database I have only two records for this species. Once sieved from Sphagnum at Burton Pond and the other sieved from a pile of birch brash in mid winter at Selwyns Wood in 2015. So this is the first I have swept one from Heather. However, even that isn't strictly true. The bug was clearly dead, it seems I swept it from a spider's web no doubt suspended between two Heather stems. I wonder why this bug is so hard to find? Could it be nocturnal? Any ideas?

I had a moth new to Iping, myself and the reserve network too, the sooty-black pyralid Matilella fusca. Mike Edwards suggested I try looking on flowering Dodder for weevils and just by tapping one clump I dislodged a Thomisus onistus and a Smicronyx jungermanniae (my fourth new species for the day but know to the site). Whatever next?! Man, I love Sussex.
A year or two ago I mentioned to the SxBRC & Adastra that I'd like to do a shieldbug atlas for Sussex. Something like what Shropshire has produced. Having no time or coding abilities, that's as far as I got. Before I knew it, volunteer Mark Robey had created (with Bob's help at the SxBRC) an online atlas. So with a few photos from myself and Derek Binns, a few lines of text from me and some minor tweaking of the look of the thing, SxBRC have launched the online atlas. (I know it was MUCH more work than that but I was impressed at how quickly the test version appeared). The site can be found here
https://www.sxbrc.org.uk/shieldbugs/mapping.html.
So many thanks to all of you have been submitting records via iRecord, they're all in there already so you can look around the map and find your records. As well as gaps in recording effort. It includes all the shield bugs, squash bugs, rhopalid bugs and the other usual suspects (such as Fire Bug).
You can start off by displaying all records across all of Sussex and see where the hot spots are and where the gaps are.
Here for example is the 1 km square I live in with eight records of six species.
And if you click on that square the species list for the square pops up.
I was looking around for the most well recorded square. It looks like this one has 145 records of 21 species!
Here they are. Including the incredible Scarlet Shieldbug
Eurydema dominulus. I would love to see that. I think this square must have something to do with Patrick Roper.
Now if you click on the species list from the drop down menu at the top left, you can focus in on individual species. Such as the Green Shieldbug here, perhaps the commonest species. Frustratingly I have just noticed that these images have squashed up a bit (that's why they're called squash bugs ha ha) but I haven't got time to change that right now. It gives you an idea anyway.
You can change the scale.
And if you click on the 'i' button some more text about the species, where you can find it in Sussex (or where it's likely to turn up if it's not yet in Sussex) and how you might find it.
Here is a scarcer species. I put this in as there is already a new dot on the map but it was great to be able to instantly know it was the third county record and the most easterly one too, a great benefit of having an atlas. An attendee on a heathland invertebrate training I ran at the RSPB found
Dalmann's Leatherbug Spathocera dalmani at it's most easterly site in Sussex at Wiggonholt Common. SxBRC will update the records at regular intervals so the records are as up to date is practical. Given that I haven't even entered this record into my copy of Recorder 6 yet, it's not going to be for a while!
And here is the individual. Only seen this three times now. Once in Hampshire and once in Dorset so this was the first Sussex one for me and only the third Sussex record. Is it slowly spreading east?
And I leave you with the map of a species I am yet to see, the Vernal Shieldbug. Tantalising stuff!
A massive thank you to Mark Robey, Bob Foreman, Clare Blencowe and Derek Binns as well as Pete Boardman from Shropshire and Tristan Bantock for being inspirations.
Now Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.B.U.G.S., get out there and fill those gaps in!!!