This web site is based largely on the book The Ground Beetles of Northern Ireland, Anderson, R., McFerran, D., & Cameron, A., 2000. It was first published on the internet in 2006 and has been updated in 2024 with higher resolution photographs and more features, including interactive maps and drawings to illustrate diagnostic features of the species. This site is another step along the way to encouraging interest in Irish ground beetles. It extends the book by including more illustrations of the species and providing updated distribution maps. Where photographs of living animals were not available we have used scans of set specimens. It is intended to act as a stimulus to further recording of ground beetles in Ireland by providing a resource which makes these little-studied animals more accessible to interested amateurs, biological recorders, school biology classes and the general public.

There are very many gaps in information which can be seen clearly in the maps. The amateur recorder can help to plug these effectively. Accurate identification of beetles is always a difficulty, but the web site has an online multimedia key to Irish Carabidae which should help in this regard.