Lucanus cervus

Cervo volante, Lucanus cervus (Linnaeus, 1758)

The stag beetle is a beetle belonging to the family of Lucanidi, distributed in most part of Europ and Asia Minor; in Italy it is present throughout the central and north to Lazio on the Tyrrhenian coast and in Marche on the Adriatic coast, while in the south is replaced by related L. Tetraodon. This species is linked to the mature oak tree forests, because the xylophagy grub develops by eating the wood stumps of oak species (Quercus sp.), although, more rarely, has also documented the use of beech, cherry and chestnut. The grub, which lives between 3 and 6 years, comes to development late in the fall and it buries and builds a cell where it pupates and where it spends the winter completing the metamorphosis the following spring. The adults appear between june and july (Bartolozzi & Sprecher-Uebersax, 2006; Bartolozzi & Maggini in Ruffo & Stoch, 2007; Harvey et al., 2011). This beetle is extinct or declining in some European countries, for this reason it has been included in Annex II of Directive 92/43/EEC, the species is protected in Tuscany under the LR 56/2000.