Macronychus quadrituberculatus
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Invertebrate > insect - beetle (Coleoptera) > Water beetle |
| Red List Status: | Near Threatened (Not Relevant) [NT(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: | Macronychus quadrituberculatus |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | Müller, P.W.J., 1806 |
| 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: | Records from 20 post-1980 hectads in England and Wales have been mapped (Foster et al, 2020). Although there is a cluster of records around the Wye, where nutrient pollution is a pressing problem, this species occurs in several river catchments in the southern half of England and is not as localised as, e.g. Riolus nitens. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Improved monitoring is required, along with action to increase autecological knowledge to raise awareness of its needs. |
| 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: | Rare habitat specialist |
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: | Sufficient routine monitoring of the aquatic invertebrate assemblages is needed to better understand threatened riverine beetles such as M. quadrituberculatus, Oreodytes davisii, Riolus nitens and Stenelmis canaliculata. Alternative strategies need to be considered. 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:
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Undertake a literature review of the species' ecological requirements to inform river managers and river restoration practitioners. Consider a multi-species project involving other threatened riverine water beetles (perhaps encompassing other river taxa?). This review should enable its audience to understand when standard measures might need to be re-considered and should include a series of species factsheets with distribution maps.
Action targets: 4. Autecology and pressures understood
Action type: Scientific research
Duration: 3-5 years
Scale of Implementation: National
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.