Philonthus rectangulus Sharp, 1874

Majka, Christopher & Klimaszewski, Jan, 2008, Adventive Staphylinidae (Coleoptera) of the Maritime Provinces of Canada: further contributions, ZooKeys 2 (2), pp. 151-174 : 165

Philonthus rectangulus Sharp, 1874

NOVA SCOTIA: Kings Co.: Grand Pré, 19.VII.1952, F.L. Trenholm, (1, NSAC).

Majka and Klimaszewski (2008) recorded P. rectangulus from Nova Scotia from specimens collected in 2004. Th e above record establishes the presence of this species in the province in 1952, 52 years earlier than previously reported, and 25 years earlier than the previous earliest record from the Maritime Provinces in 1977 from New Brunswick ( Majka and Klimaszewski 2008). It appears to originally have been native to Japan before spreading to China in 1901, arriving in Europe in 1916. The earliest records from North America are from 1908 in Oregon ( Smetana 1995). It now is widely distributed across the Palaearctic region, including China and Japan in the east. It is also known from many other parts of the world and is considered a cosmopolitan species ( Herman 2001; Smetana 2004b). It is found in all kinds of decaying organic matter, particularly in synanthropic situations, and is particularly common in animal dung, compost, and rotting plant debris ( Smetana 1995).