Gravel Water Beetle (Hydrochus nitidicollis)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Invertebrate > insect - beetle (Coleoptera) > Water beetle |
| Red List Status: | Vulnerable (Not Relevant) [VU(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Hydrochus nitidicollis |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | Mulsant, 1844 |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | Foster, 2010 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | H. nitidicollis is known from 5 pre- and 5 post-1980 hectads. It is a natural rarity, never reliably recorded outside Devon and Cornwall; Foster (2010) noted that "The narrow distribution in England indicates a strong dependency on a warm Atlantic climate rather than on a particular management practice or habitat". However, it is a riverine specialist, vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures so warrants monitoring, at least. It is a NERC Act S41 species which formed part of the Grouped SAP for river shingle beetles in the UKBAP. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Actions completed for the UKBAP river shingle beetles action plan need to be reviewed to determine what further measures may be appropriate for this species. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | No |
| Justification: | Hydrochus nitidicollis is a habitat specialist with a highly restricted geographical distribution. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 3. National Monitoring Plan agreed and implemented |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Unknown |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | Ad hoc recording as part of GB water beetle recording scheme (Balfour-Browne Club/Aquatic Coleoptera Conservation Trust) |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Review options for monitoring this species as part of an England threatened riverine invertebrate assemblage. A broad framework is likely to be more efficient than a multitude of single-species monitoring actions. Any such framework should consider EA biological monitoring coverage, and taxa unlikely to be detected by standard kick-sampling methods.
Action targets: 3. National Monitoring Plan agreed and implemented
Action type: Status survey/review
Duration: 2 years
Scale of Implementation: Not applicable
High priority sites:
Comments:
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.