The Australian Museum Lord Howe Island Expedition 2017—marine invertebrates

Abstract

A survey of Lord Howe Island Coleoptera was conducted by a team from the Australian Museum and the Natural History Museum of Denmark (University of Copenhagen), in February 2017. The primary purpose of the survey was to assess the status of larger species, with the assumption that these are more vulnerable to predation by the introduced rodent Rattus rattus. Critical size was arbitrarily designated 1 cm or more in length. The 32 large species collected are listed here with comments on both their status on the islands and their taxonomy. Nine of these species are newly recorded from the island. The small number of large beetle species collected by a second Australian Museum group working on Balls Pyramid, 22 km from the main island, is also included here. The cerambycid Oricopis insulana (Olliff, 1889) is recorded for the first time since its original collection in the early 1880s. Keywords: