The minotaur beetle is a large, round dung beetle found on sandy grassland and heathland. It is glossy black, with ridges running down the wing cases. Only the male dons the bull-like horns, the female has pointed edges where they would be.

The beetle feeds mostly on rabbit droppings and other dung, often at night. Adults emerge in autumn, but still need to mature in order to breed, so undergo an intense feeding period. If the weather is mild, they may start breeding in early winter. The males use their horns to compete for a mate and then subsequently defend the nest they make with the female to protect the larvae inside.

The minotaur beetle nests in tunnels that can be up to 1.5 metres deep, where they lay their eggs and provide dung for the larvae to feed on. Both the male and female provide food for the larvae, as you can imagine, this is dung. They drag it back to the nest using their strong front legs. By the following summer, the adults will die to make way for the next generation.

There are 60 species of dung beetle in the UK and they are fantastic indicators of ecosystem health and biodiversity, responding quickly to environmental change. They also play an important role in nutrient dispersal and cycling in the soil, improvement of soil structure and parasite regulation. These often overlooked or simply unnoticed insects prove that you don’t have to be the size of a European bison to have a landscape-scale impact!

Also deemed an ‘ecosystem engineer’, the humble dung beetle, when in healthy numbers, performs an incredible array of natural functions that underpin soil health and support a large range of animal and plant life, thus helping boost biodiversity.

Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust regularly carry out dung beetle surveys at rewilding sites to monitor the populations. In combination with soil nutrient assessments and earthworm surveys, these surveys help inform how healthy the soils are as they transition from nutrient-rich post-arable fields to natural, functional ecosystems.