The Staphylinidae is by far the largest beetle family in the UK with over 900 species. Paradoxically it is also one of the least well studied, partly because it is generally regarded as a difficult group to tackle. You also have to look for staphs, rather than find them sitting on a plant. Then you have issues with identification as the literature is a bit thin on the ground. In this presentation we will take a tour through the various sub-families, with some indication of how you can identify the larger staphs. This will set the scene for a future workshop.

Speaker: Don Stenhouse is a freelance invertebrate ecologist, specialising in coleoptera and is also the Natural History Curator at Bolton Museum. He has been grappling with invertebrates for 33 years, knows how difficult they can be to identify and likes to help others when he can. He taught beetle identification as a tutor at the Preston Montford Field Centre for several years. He is currently preparing a paper on 280+ Staphylinidae types, mainly from New Guinea , which has been neglected and he hopes to finish in 2022. Ditto for a checklist of species recorded from Lancashire and Cheshire.