Zenobiella subrufescens: not just a old woodland species?

Authors
David Long
Issue
14
Page
21

Over the last decade or so I have been very interested in where Zenobiella subrufescens is to be found. There were the expected sites like bramble patches in woodland rides and on the trunks and leaves of deciduous trees and understories like hazel. Then Keith Alexander found it on Yew at the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust Reserve at Ban-y-Gor on the lower Wye, and there were later finds (Conchologists’ Newsletter 147:103, December 1998 and Conchologists’ Newsletter 151: 266 December 1999). Since then there have been more finds in the Cotswolds, Forest of Dean and west Worcestershire (Mollusc World 11: 19 July 2006).

An arachnologist friend and a coleopterist friend and I were recording on two Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust reserves near Sapperton (SO/90) on 11 June. Z subrufescens turned up in their investigations on Wild Rose, Yew and under Hartstongue fern at the first site, and on Yew and/or Holly and Wild Rose or Hawthorn at a woodland edge at the second.

In this area (“Mid-West”?) it certainly seems to like fairly wild places but it is not exclusive to old woodland. And it is certainly very much a climber.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?