Summary details for Philodromus buxi Simon, 1884

Distribution

A single female was taken at Bloxworth by O. Pickard-Cambridge in the nineteenth century (Locket et al. 1974). Two males were collected on two separate dates in 2014 in a Malaise trap located on a green roof in Greenwich (Wilson, 2015), it was found to be numerous in one area in the Lee valley in 2016 and has also been found at a site in Thurrock in Essex in the same year. The species is absent from Scandinavia, but has been recorded from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania and the Iberian Peninsula.

Habitat and ecology

In Europe the species can be found on bushes and trees.

Status

The species was deleted from the British checklist (Merrett & Murphy 2000) because only one specimen had ever been recorded from Britain in the nineteenth century, and there may have been confusion over its origin. We currently do not know how the 2014 specimens came to be in Greenwich, but the suspicion that a population exists in the local area has been proven, and the species will probably increasingly start appearing elsewhere in the region. Author of profile: P.R. Harvey