Geotrupes spiniger (Marsham, 1802)

This species is generally common from lowlands to low mountain altitudes across southern and central Europe reaching north to the UK and southern Fennoscandia, to the east it occurs from Iran through Asia Minor and Russia to western Asia, and here it is locally common throughout the south of England and Wales, becoming less so further north and almost absent from the West Country. In Scotland there are a few scattered records from the highlands and the Western Isles. Despite a recent decline it remains one of our most common geotrupids, occurring on cattle pasture and among horse dung in a wide range of situations including woodland, moorland and dunes.  Adults appear early in the year and may remain active into October, they are usually crepuscular or nocturnal but on warm days may be seen in the open, usually upon dung or among surrounding short grass, they fly well and are often attracted in numbers to light or freshly-deposited dung. Mating occurs in the spring and early summer and the female will then excavate a vertical burrow directly beneath a dung pat, from this central burrow she then excavates horizontal branches and provisions each with a cylindrical brood mass of dung, generally about 100mm long and 25mm across, into which she will lay a single egg. Working up the central burrow she will use soil from each brood chamber to cap the previous one and, once filled in, she will display avoidance behaviour towards the buried dung.  Larvae develop during the summer and either pupate in the burrows during the autumn, in which case the adults will eclose and may feed for a while before overwintering within the burrow, or overwinter and pupate in the spring to produce adults a little later than those that overwintered. This is one of the species to be found in flight over dung pasture on warm spring and early summer evenings, and by late spring many, if not most, will be found carrying large numbers of phoretic mites beneath the thorax and abdomen. Specimens will need to be examined carefully at first because G. stercorarius (Linnaeus, 1758) is equally common and the two may occur together.