Hallomenus binotatus (Quensel, 1790)

In common with most saproxylic species, Hallomenus has suffered from human habitat modification and has declined over recent decades but it remains locally common though sporadic across the entire Palaearctic region from Spain to the east of Russia and is also native to Nova Scotia, in Europe it occurs from lowland to middle mountain altitudes and extends north to the UK and northern parts of Fennoscandia. In the UK it is locally common across Wales and England north to Nottingham, although it is generally absent from the West Country, very local and scarce further north to the Scottish Highlands, and absent from the Islands and from Ireland. The typical habitat is old woodland and wooded parkland where they are associated with fruiting bodies of a range of fungi, they occur on a range of deciduous trees, and more rarely on various conifers, although in northern latitudes they often occur in pine plantations. Adults occur through the spring and summer, they are nocturnal and spend most of their time on standing and fallen dead timber, usually in the vicinity of fungi but they also visit sap and sometimes in numbers, and they are occasionally active on bark in very warm weather. Eggs are laid in batches into the fruiting bodies and larvae develop through the summer within the fungi, winter is passed either in the pupal or adult stage as adults have been recorded under bark in January in northern continental latitudes, the most frequent host fungus is Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.)Murrill (1920), usually on oak or beech, but other hosts include Phellinus igniarius (L.) Quel. (1886), often on willows but also birch and alder, P. pini (Brot.) Bondartsev & Singer, (1941), on pine and other conifers, Bjerkander adusta (Willd.) P.Karst. (1880), on a range of dead trees, Polyporus squamosus (Huds.) Quelet (1886), usually on elm or birch, Amylocystis lapponcia (Romell) Bondartsev & Singer (1944), a rare species of coniferous forests, and Pleurotus porrigens (Pers.) Singer (1947) on a range of conifers but usually hemlock. Larvae often occur in large numbers within the fungus and it is unlikely they will have room to overwinter either when fully grown or as pupae, and it is likely that full-grown larvae enter the soil to pupate in the autumn and winter is passed in the adult stage but the details are not understood. Adults are easily found by nocturnal searching but they can move very quickly as well as jump as so will need to be sampled carefully, they may also be attracted to fermenting-fruit traps or sap, and they have been recorded from pitfall traps buried in accumulated wood fragments in old deciduous trees hollows.