Description: 4.2-5.2mm long black ground beetle with four yellow-red elytral spots. Typical of clayey or sandy bare ground in open country.

NI account: Sporadically distributed and mostly in the east.

Ecology: Characteristic of open, sparsely vegetated, gravelly/sandy places on lakeshores or near the sea, but also on quarry bottoms or on waste ground well away from water. Recorded more often on humus soils than other riparian Peryphus, and very occasionally on arable soils.

Distribution: A Eurasian Boreo-temperate species (55), distributed in Europe from Scandinavia to northern Spain and east to Siberia and Mongolia. Introduced to North America (Bousquet, 1992).

Similar Species: Bembidion andreae: as femoratum but third antennal segment pale and legs pale B. bruxellense: more convex; striae deeper; colour darker; pronotum sometimes duller; only first antennal segment pale

Key Identification Features:

• Small (4.2-5.2mm)
• Terminal segment of palpi much reduced (Fig. 31)
• Elytral striae disappearing apically and 2nd weaker than 1st
• Pronotum strongly cordate
• Elytra four-spotted
• Seventh elytral striae obsolete
• Base of pronotum impunctate
• Antennae with 2 pale basal segments, femora dark

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

iNaturalist: Bembidion femoratum at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.

GBIF data for Bembidion femoratum | Classification: Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae, Bembidion

Thumbnails for genus Bembidion