Micropeplus fulvus Erichson, 1840 

This locally common species occurs throughout southern and Western Europe and North Africa, extending north into southern Fennoscandia and the UK, it occurs from lowland to mountain altitudes (about 1500m in Turkey) and, though rare and sporadic in many northern areas, is generally one of the commonest members of the subfamily. Further east it extends far into Asia and in China, India and Japan is represented by the subspecies japonicus Sharp, 1874. Here it is widespread and locally common across England and Wales though very local and scattered in the north and sporadic and rare in Scotland north to the highlands, it is absent from the West Country and there are no records from the islands. Adults are present year-round and usually occur in numbers when found, typically among decaying vegetation such as hay or straw refuse and compost heaps but also in very moist marginal wetland situations e.g. we find them in abundance in extraction samples taken through the winter from piles of pond clearance in a local park. During the warmer months they may be sieved from compost, extracted from samples or, occasionally, swept from vegetation in damp and shaded habitats, they disperse during summer evenings, are attracted to light and regularly occur in flight-interception traps.  Hinton (1941) reported finding both adults and larvae in a compost heap in Cambridgeshire during January; they occurred both among the compost and near ground level ‘among partly liquefied cabbage leaves and other plant refuse’, and a single pupa was found in a cell about an inch below the ground at the bottom of the heap. In Spain adults have been swept from crops in areas of cultivated cereals and legumes intended for forage, and in the south of Europe generally the species is also associated with woodland environments, occurring under bark of coniferous and broadleaf trees, among leaf-litter, under logs and among grass and moss on wooded margins. Both adults and larvae feed on plant material and moulds.