Staphylinidae (rove beetles)

A huge family and difficult to identify. I had been planning to pend most of my 'Staphs' until the publication of Duff's Volume 2 of Beetles of Britain and Ireland but in the end I decided to progress as far as I could using Hackston's keys (great as far as they go, but don't yet cover every genus to species level). Part way through sorting them all out I realised that there are two excellent handbooks in the RES series covering most of the rove beetles including several that I'd been stuck on (part 5 by Lott and parts 7 & 8 by Lott and Anderson). Not sure why I hadn't acquired these before - I don't think I realised how much of the family was covered or how good they are! I am now making better progress armed with these. The subfamily Aleocharinae isn't covered by these books and remains a problem for me: I have a few pended until I can access better references.

Note that the carrion beetle family Silphidae has recently been downgraded to a subfamily (or two?) of Staphylinidae. At some point I will update this website accordingly but for now Silphidae is still treated here as a separate family.

subfamily Omaliinae

includes genera Anthobium, Dropephylla, Eusphalerum, Lesteva and Omalium

subfamily Tachyporinae

includes genera Bolitobius, Tachinus and Tachyporus

subfamily Aleocharinae

includes genera Aloconota, Atheta, Callicerus, Cypha, Ocalea and Thinonoma

subfamily Oxytelinae

includes genera Anotylus, Bledius, Carpelimus and Oxytelus

subfamily Steninae

includes genus Stenus

subfamily Paederinae

includes genera Lithocharis and Sunius

subfamily Staphylininae

includes genera Megalinus, Ocypus, Othius, Philonthus, Quedius, Tasgius and Xantholinus