Epuraea distincta (Grimmer, 1841)

This very local and generally scarce species has a rather sporadic European distribution from France and northern Italy to Ukraine and western Russia although it is generally absent from the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor, to the north it extends into the southern Baltic countries and southern Finland but is absent from some areas e.g. Denmark and the Netherlands, further east it is known from Kazakhstan, eastern Siberia and Japan but it is not known if this distribution is continuous. Here it is a very local and rare species; there are scattered and mostly coastal records from the Wash to North Devon and it is more frequently recorded from Wales, it may be a recent arrival that is expanding in range as there are a few recent records from northern England and Scotland and it was first recorded from Ireland in 2007.Typical habitats are carr and damp woodland with plenty of trees in various stages of decay; adults are associated with various trees including Ash and Sycamore but are probably most frequently found willows, they overwinter in reed litter or moss etc. and are active over a long season from February until the autumn. Adults are both diurnal and nocturnal; during the day they may be swept from reeds or waterside foliage and they occasionally occur on flowers, by night they are often active on logs and trunks and may appear in numbers among various fungi fruiting on trunks and fallen timber, especially Daedaleopsis confragosa (Bolton) on willow in marginal wetland situations. In Japan adults are often collected from brackets of D. nipponica Imazeki, a fungus endemic to that country. Larvae are thought to develop through the summer among decaying fungi and new-generation adults appear during the summer and remain active into the autumn. The usual sampling method is sweeping suitable vegetation, especially around reed beds, but adults are also frequent through the summer in flight-interception traps and among extraction samples of reed litter through the winter.