Warming drives flood of new insect species to UK — SkimNews
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- Matt Phelps and Graeme Lyons made the first UK identification of a Verge cricket (Eumodicogryllus bordigalensis) at Knepp Estate in West Sussex, tracking the insect for three hours before discovering it in a crack in parched clay.
- Amateur naturalists racked up UK firsts: retired secretary Jackie Harmer found an Odice pergrata moth in North Cheshire; David Cousins identified an Enolmis acanthella spotted seal moth, described as a "completely undiscovered genus in Britain," in north Essex; and 18-year-old Olly McKeown discovered the UK mainland's first breeding praying mantises in Truro, Cornwall.
- Harry Witts of Essex Wildlife Trust discovered two new species at Colne Point in July — a blue slender-winged grasshopper (Sphingonotus caerulans) and a big-eyed bug (Geocoris megacephalus) — with Witts arguing the grasshopper was a "natural arrival," unlike Kent specimens likely stowed away in the Channel tunnel.
- Liam Crowley, an Oxford University entomologist and Royal Entomological Society fellow, said warming is the simplest explanation for northward insect shifts but noted habitat restoration and post-Ice-Age ecological recolonization also play roles, calling this a "bumper year" for migrating hummingbird hawk moths, hoverflies, cicadas, and painted lady butterflies.
- Phelps noted the cricket wave coincided with enormous wildfires in Bordeaux, raising the possibility that some insects fled the southern European flames.
- Cornwall Wildlife Trust confirmed that experts now agree the praying mantis has likely bred at multiple sites including the New Forest, with reports predating McKeown's August sighting.
Why it matters: UK entomologists are documenting a tangible, observable shift in island biodiversity — warming temperatures are bringing species like the Bordeaux cricket, which arrived amid southern French wildfires, northward, meaning pest management and conservation frameworks must now track insects never before resident in Britain. Crowley's caveat that habitat restoration and post-glacial recolonization may factor in complicates any clean climate-causation narrative.
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