Last weekend I went to an area I don't go often; Western Road in Brighton, the main high street where all the big shops are. I wasn't expecting to find a species that hadn't been recorded in East Sussex for 50 years though. I nearly tripped over this massive centipede on the pavement, it caught my eye initially as a hairy caterpillar but I soon realised it was a dead Lithobius centipede. I was actually on my way to the beach to see if Storm Erik had washed anything up and to exercise my back, so I had lots of pots on me. I have never seen the much commoner Lithobius forficatus in the middle of town like this, so I had a feeling it was something good and it was clearly very big.
I keyed it out and it was fairly obviously the nationally scarce Lithobius pilicornis. It's our biggest Lithobius and can reach over 35 mm (this was 32 mm). Many thanks to Steve Gregory for confirming. Here are the details that show it's this species with short projections on segments 7 and 9 (the small sections sitting between the larger ones below) and more importantly, key spines in the right place on the hind coxae.
And here is the BMIG
page for the beast. The last record for East Sussex was at Rye some 50 years ago! I have seen it once before in South Wales with Christian Owen. So, the moral of the story is, don't go anywhere without a pot!
What a weekend! What a line up. It's been a long time since I invested in some training, this weekend being the
British Myriapod and Isopod Group's recording event in the south east. I couldn't miss it and a big thanks to Paul Lee for organising. Now, I've already blogged about the
beetle highlight for me being the second record for Sussex of
Mesosa nebulosa. So here I am gonna talk about myriapods and isopods.
Myriapods predominantly include the millipedes and centipedes. Here is a huge, greenish, rapidly-tapering centipede we found in a compost heap at Wisley RHS. This is Henia vesuviana. Even though I saw more millipedes, it was the centipedes I was more into, as many of them were identifiable in the field.
Such as this one that is often found under pine bark being Geophilus carpophagus.
There are around 60 species and there is a
good key by FSC. Now, I saw lot of millipedes but didn't manage a photo beyond a blurred shot of the species we came to know as 'Millipede X' (no one was sure what this was exactly - you see we have quite a few alien species). There are about 60 species of these too but new alien synathropic species are being discovered so I can't be sure on this. You can find out more about identifying myriapods and isopods
here. I learnt a great way to tell Tachypoidulus niger in the field and how easy it is to see and adult male
in the field.
Now thanks to Steve Gregory I saw two new woodlice (Trichoniscoides albidus & Ligidium hypnorum) but photographed neither. There are around 40 species with only relatively few very common ones. This is Porcellionides cingendus. I see it now and again (including today in the suction sampler) in rush litter at Woods Mill.
I also had a few other interesting species, such as this Green Celar Slug Limacus maculatus. Although due to its camo-pattern, I refer Combat or Battle Slug.
And good old Staphylinus dimidiaticornis put in a show too.
A massive thank you to all the people who helped but particularly Paul Lee, Steve Gregory and Keith Lugg. I've already put into practice what I learned and I'm looking forward to finding some more myriapods and isopods sometime soon! I have three fairly common woodlice on my wish list to look out for now too...
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