Orthotylus caprai

First recorded in the UK in Oxfordshire in 2006. I'm not sure how widespread it is now. There are no Kent records showing on iRecord or the NBN Atlas at the time of writing, so potentially this might be the first for Kent - but my guess is that it's now common and widespread across SE England and any records just haven't made their way to those sources yet.

Using Nau I wasn't entirely sure if this was caprai or moncreaffi - initially it keyed to moncreaffi as I took the pale hairs to be white not yellow, but the left clasper was a better for caprai. I couldn't discount moncreaffi on habitat because although it wasn't saltmarsh, it's wasn't very far from saltmarsh and I caught a Saltmarsh Plume Agdistis bennetii there the same night. I was glad to have recently purchased Niedringhaus, Stöckmann & Wachmann as this provided diagrams of both left and right clasper which helped to confirm it was caprai. It was almost 3.0mm long.

male Orthotylus caprai showing sings, antenna, rostrum, hind tibia, claspers, left clasper (4 orientations), right clasper (3 orientations) and aedeagus (2 orientations), Cooper Street, near Ash (Kent, UK), 17th July 2026