Description: Small (6.5-8mm) red-brown ground beetle which inhabits dryish grassland, living in tussocks, under stones etc. Common in Britain but very rare in Ireland.

NI account: Johnson & Halbert (1902) cite records for Belvoir Park near Belfast and Rathlin Island, Antrim. Hardy's (1897) Rathlin record, together with that of other species he listed for this locality, is doubtful (Speight et al., 1983), despite the existence of a specimen in the National Museum of Ireland. A male specimen labelled "Belvoir Park" is also extant in the National Museum Collection. The species certainly does not occur there now and was excluded from a recent Irish List (Anderson et al., 1997) on lack of evidence for its establishment in Ireland.

Ecology: This is a thermoxerophilic species, and if present in Ireland might be expected in dry, south-facing heath or scrub habitats near the east coast. In Britain, it is only common in south-east England becoming rarer northwards, and then mostly in the east, as far as the Scottish border (Luff, 1998).

Distribution: A European Temperate species (73), occurring from southern Fennoscandia south to the Pyrenees and east to the Caucasus.

Similar Species: Leistus terminatus: hind angles of pronotum not parallel (converging) at base (Fig. 3). (L. rufomarginatus: pronotum with setae at hind angles)

Key Identification Features:

• Dilated, very flat mandibles (Fig. 1)
• Neck constricted with a lace (Fig. 1)
• Pronotum cordate
• Uniform yellow or brown colouration
• Hind angles of pronotum parallel at base (Fig. 3)
• Pronotum without setae at hind angles (Fig. 3)

Distribution Map from NBN: Leistus ferrugineus at National Biodiversity Network mapping facility, data for UK.

iNaturalist: Leistus ferrugineus at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.

GBIF data for Leistus ferrugineus | Classification: Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae, Leistus

Thumbnails for genus Leistus