Burnt Pine Longhorn Arhopalus ferus

Apparently attracted to burnt trees after a fire and normally found in coniferous woods.

This individual was attracted to light in a mainly deciduous wood but there were a few scattered conifers and historically I gather there have been a lot of larch trees here (many now removed but a few still present). I'm not aware of any fires having occurred here.

Duff provides four characters to separate this from the commoner Arhopalus rusticus:

• Hind tarsomere 3 less deeply lobed, split to about half way (although the accompanying diagram shows it split further than half-way). Hackston uses this character too but doesn't specify that it must be the hind tarsomere - however judging from this specimen, that is important: the hind tarsomere 3 was split to about half way but the fore tarsomere 3 was split nearly to the base.
• Elytron lacking a small tooth at the apical angle. Potentially hard to see so the presence of the tooth is arguably a stronger character in favour of rusticus than apparent absence is in support of ferus. But anyway, I looked hard and couldn't see a tooth.
• Labrum with a median setal tuft, lacking in rusticus. I assume the little patch of gold setae in the middle of the labrum was what is referred to here.
• Eyes glabrous between the facets, whereas rusticus has fine hairs between the facets. I got a little stuck here because mine clearly had a few hairs (not particularly fine) between some of the facets. But Duff illustrates this and shows rusticus as having far more hairs than my individual. My specimen only had a few hairs, restricted to the rear half of the eye - but that's not glabrous, so could it really be ferus? Well Hackston helped out here - he doesn't describe the eyes of ferus as glabrous, but allows for "a few isolated bristles between the facets" in ferus - and that's exactly what mine had.

Burnt Pine Longhorn Arhopalus ferus showing hind tarsomere 3 (2 views), elytral apical angles, labrum and eye (2 views), Sporle Wood (Norfolk, UK), 27th July 2023