. British journal of entomology and natural history. Natural history; Entomology. 12 BR. J. ENT. NAT. HIST., 10: 1997 records is simply a factor of recorder effort. This tends to be confirmed by anecdotal comments from Mike Edwards in West Sussex who reports that G. rotundatum "has always been easy to find around here—going back into the early 1970s" (pers. comm.). The distribution of G. rotundatum is seemingly confined to a narrow corridor from the West Sussex coast through Surrey and parts of North Hampshire, with odd outlying records to the east and north (Fig. 1). This narrow ban
. British journal of entomology and natural history. Natural history; Entomology. 12 BR. J. ENT. NAT. HIST., 10: 1997 records is simply a factor of recorder effort. This tends to be confirmed by anecdotal comments from Mike Edwards in West Sussex who reports that G. rotundatum "has always been easy to find around here—going back into the early 1970s" (pers. comm.). The distribution of G. rotundatum is seemingly confined to a narrow corridor from the West Sussex coast through Surrey and parts of North Hampshire, with odd outlying records to the east and north (Fig. 1). This narrow band of distribution is mirrored within my main area of search, Surrey (Figure 2). Single individuals are usually encountered, but it is not uncommon to find numerous specimens at a single site. Overall, I am aware of 87 records of this species from around seventy localities, including numerous records for Rewell Wood, West Sussex, and several from Bookham Common, Surrey. There are records from at least 19 post-1980 10-km squares, thus suggesting that it is actually a great deal commoner than previously supposed. Gymnosoma rotundatum appears to have no clear habitat preferences in terms of either geology or vegetation type. Those records where the geology can be confidently ascribed show the following breakdown and provide no obvious indication of an association with a particular soil type, although sand (22 records) seems to be better represented than clay (10) and chalk (12). These data seem to suggest that G. rotundatum is most commonly associated with hot sandy sites, especially heathland and scrubby sites on sand and chalk. Adults visit a wide range of flowers, especially umbellifers such as hogweed Heracleum sphondylium, hedge parsley Torilis japonica and wild parsnip Pastinaca sativa. Often they can be found flying amongst ruderal vegetation such as Polygonumpersicaria and this helps to confirm a preference for hot dry places. They are most frequent in July and August, bu
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