Description: Small (4.5-6mm) bronze ground beetle. Diurnal, occurring on most types of open country, but usually in fairly dry, montane heath types to high altitude. Widespread but local.

NI account: Widespread but local in Ireland.

Ecology: Mainly recorded from well-drained soils. There are records for heaths and rough grassland up to the summits of mountains but in areas of blanket peat, the stony margins of streams and flushes are favoured. Also found on sandy coastal grassland and heath.

Distribution: Circumpolar Wide-Boreal in distribution (36), found in the whole of Europe east to Siberia and into North America. Widespread in Britain but more common in the north (Luff, 1998).

Similar Species: Notiophilus aestuans: elytra with two pre-apical punctures (Fig. 11)

Key Identification Features:

• Eyes large
• Small shiny, parallel-sided species
• Dark bronze
• Tibiae black
• 2nd elytral interval > 3 times as broad as third (Fig. 10)
• Elytra with one pre-apical puncture (Fig. 11)

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

iNaturalist: Notiophilus aquaticus at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.

GBIF data for Notiophilus aquaticus | Classification: Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae, Notiophilus

Thumbnails for genus Notiophilus