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Species Account for Cetonia aurata

PLEASE NOTE, many records in this group are not yet available

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Cetonia aurata  (Linnaeus, 1761)
Rose Beetle
Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae

Rose Chafer in copulation Copyright: Samuel Chamberlin

 
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Taxonomic group: beetles (Coleoptera) - Available county data

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Records: 186
First Record: 1836
Latest Record: 2023

1992-on hectads: 11
Pre-1992 hectads: 7
Total hectads: 14

Additional Phenology Data

Images

Rose chafer
Rose chafer
Rose Chafer in copulation
Rose Chafer in copulation
Cetonia aurata 01
Cetonia aurata 01
Cetonia aurata
Cetonia aurata
Cetonia aurata teneral female
Cetonia aurata teneral female
Teneral Cetonia aurata
Teneral Cetonia aurata

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Species text
Modern records for the Rose Chafer are centred around the Colchester area in the north-east of the county and a small part of the Lee and Roding Valley areas in south-west Essex, as well as a seemingly well-established population in a compost heap in Witham.

Peter Hammond (pers.comm.) writes that older Essex data includes a few very old records for the Colchester and Epping areas, some not quite so old but pre-1950 records for Waltham Abbey, Buckhurst Hill, Lexden and Thorpe-le-Soken. Most of these records are for 1946, a particularly ‘good’ Cetonia year. He also has a series of his own records for the Chelmsford area (Broomfield, Chelmsford, Gt Baddow) for the years 1953, 1957, 1958, 1959 and 1963, and there are one or two extra Epping Forest records noted in Buck’s (1955) paper. The very last of the Chelmsford area records was one by Cliff Barham who found one on a pavement in Chelmsford town centre on 9 April 1963.

It seems that a century ago the Rose Chafer was considered to be generally distributed and common in the south of the country, becoming scarcer and more local in the Midlands, and distinctly rarer north of this. In Suffolk the Rose Chafer has always been rare and very localised, and has apparently not been recorded since April 1961 (Nash, 2007 in White Admiral 66). Interestingly, it seems as though the situation has been much the same in Norfolk as it has in Suffolk and Essex. There are a couple of late 19th century Norfolk records (Norwich and Downham Market), and Peter Hammond has been informed by Martin Collier that he has only a couple of later ones for the county, for individuals found at Thorpe (Norwich outskirts) in August 1961 and July 1962. The lack of subsequent Norwich records seems to very much mirror the Suffolk and Essex experience, i.e. a cut off after 1963! References

Species text last edited on Sat Aug 5th 2017 by user 3

Habitats

Broad Habitat Data (based on 11 records with habitat information)

no subhabitat data available

Structural Habitat Data (based on 4 records with structural habitat information)

Habitat Detail and Method (based on 186 records with habitat detail and method information)

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