Hypocaccus dimidiatus (Illiger, 1807)

This halobiont species is widespread and locally common around the coasts of the Western Palaearctic region, the nominative subspecies is more southern; occurring around the Mediterranean, including many of the islands, across North Africa and the Azores and Canary Islands, while ssp. maritimus (Stephens, J.F., 1830) occurs around the coasts of western and northern Europe, extending north into the south of Fennoscandia and the UK. Here it is widespread around the coasts of England, Wales and southern Scotland; there appears to have been a reduction over recent decades and it has vanished from some of its former sites but it remains locally common in many areas and adults are often very abundant where they are established. Adults are present year-round; they overwinter in soil etc. and become active early in the year, they are generally nocturnal and spend the day buried in sand or under debris and emerge during the evening to forage. Both adults and larvae are predaceous, larvae develop among decaying organic matter, including dung and carrion, where they feed on diptera larvae etc. while adults are more general predators. Typical habitats include beaches and dune slacks, maritime pastures and salt marsh margins and on the continent they are common in wooded areas by the sea, adults are strong fliers, they occasionally come to light and on warm summer nights may be found some distance from the sea. Large aggregations of adults sometimes occur in spring and early summer, hence early in June 2014 we found very large numbers by digging up decaying seaweed just above the upper tide line on beaches in North Somerset, along with numerous other coastal beetles, while extensive searching of the adjacent dune slacks failed to reveal any adults at all.