Lesser Silver Water Beetle
Lesser Silver Water Beetle (Hydrochara caraboides)
‘Magical beetle needs an old home’
When out of the water, Lesser Silver Water Beetles are a shiny black, but underwater they transform magically as bubbles of air become trapped in tiny hairs on their underside giving them a silvery sheen.These beetles have a rather rounded blobby body shape, but then they don’t need to be sleek and streamlined – they live in ponds full of plants where they clamber round the lush vegetation, enjoying a diet of water snails and aquatic invertebrates when young and decaying plant matter as adults.
Lesser Silver Water Beetles were once scattered across Britain but now are found only in Cheshire, the Somerset Levels, and parts of North Wales, where they are classed as ‘endangered’. Because these rare creatures need ‘overgrown’ ponds, they are very vulnerable to ‘traditional’ pond clearance: if their sites are dredged or even ‘tidied up’, the beetles lose their homes. They are especially vulnerable during the breeding season as their eggs are laid in cases attached to vegetation, and if these are dislodged they can easily drown.
Your gift of £12.00 will help us to help landowners to manage ponds in Cheshire, North Wales and Somerset to provide the perfect ‘scruffy’ homes for this discerning little beetle.
The Give and Let Live Scheme is supported by our friends at Miller Philanthropy,
with additional thanks to Nick Roberts Design for the illustrations.
