A RARE non-biting midge and several other species has been discovered after a survey of a conservation estate which environmentalists described as a "lost world".
Researchers from environmental charity Trees for Life found 11 rare species at Dundreggan near Loch Ness in the Highlands.
However the discovery of the non-biting midge (Chironomus vallenduuki) y entomologist Peter Chandler is unlikely to herald Highland summers without the bloodthirsty insect as it has probably been around for centuries, although nobody ever noticed.
In total, more than 3,300 species have now been recorded at the charity's forest restoration site. At least 68 of these are priority species for conservation.
Alan Watson Featherstone, founder of Trees for Life, said: "We just don't know what we have in our country. People are going off and discovering new species in the Amazon or somewhere like that.
"But closer to home we have only two or three per cent of the Caledonian Forest left and it just has been overlooked. I am sure this non-biting midge has been here all along, just nobody has noticed it before, partly because there are few people who could identify small invertebrates likes this midge. There are only a few specialists in the country and they don't often get up to places like this.
"It was caught just above a pond on our land, so there may well be an association with water. Many midges' larvae breed in water. But the Highland biting midge breeds in a different way, in boggy ground. So I doubt whether these is any open competition between the two. If there was, we might have fewer biting midges."
Other key findings during the charity’s 2016 survey season included two rare gnats whose larvae feed on fungi. One of these (Sciophila varia) is only known from four other UK sites. The other (Mycomya nigricornis) is only known in the UK from a handful of Scottish sites and had not been seen since 1990.
Mr Featherstone added: “Dundreggan is a special part of the Caledonian Forest that keeps on revealing beautiful, interesting and rare species. The surprisingly rich wealth of life in this corner of the Highlands highlights the importance of concerted conservation action to protect and restore Scotland’s wild places."
The charity also found two parasitic wasps (Homotropus pallipes and Diphyus salicatorius), for which there are very few Scottish records, and – for the first time in Scotland north of the River Tay – a pseudoscorpion called the knotty shining claw (Lamprochernes nodosus).
A micro-moth, the small barred longhorn (Adela croesella) – only documented at three other locations in Scotland, and never before this far north – was found by volunteer Richard Davidson taking part in one of Trees for Life’s volunteer Conservation Weeks.
Other new species for the UK discovered on the estate in recent years were: three sawflies; an aphid; two aphid parasitoids; three fungus gnats; and a mite.
Dundreggan has also revealed the second-ever British record of a waxfly species; a golden horsefly only seen once before in Scotland since 1923; and the juniper shieldbug, thought to be the first Highland record.
Mr Featherstone added: "Our latest discoveries add to an already-remarkable range of rare and endangered species found at Dundreggan - some of which were previously unknown in the UK or Scotland, or which were feared to be extinct."
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