Description: 10-13mm long black ground beetle with faint bronze hue. Predatory. Lives on open grassland and moorland at moderate to high altitude. Local, but widespread in the north and west.

NI account: Widespread and locally common on high ground, but local in more southern counties and not recorded from Kerry.

Ecology: A cold-preferent species, rarely recorded below the 350m contour. Mostly reported from wet upland heath and blanket peat in mountains. Very similar in appearance to P. oblongopunctatus but the latter is a species of lowland woods. There is some overlap in preferences, however, and both species have been collected in a scrub wood/montane heath interface at Glendun, Antrim.

Distribution: A 'Boreo-British' species in Europe and restricted to the north and west of the British Isles and Fennoscandia. It is classified as circumpolar Boreo-arctic Montane (26), and widespread in northern Siberia east to Kamchatka and into northern parts of North America.

Similar Species: Pterostichus oblongopunctatus: bronze reflection stronger; lateral bead of pronotum in hind half only; tibiae pale

Key Identification Features:

• Medium/large species, with slight bronze reflection
• Hind angles of pronotum sharp (Fig. 64)
• Pronotum with a single basal fovea
• Lateral bead of pronotum present in hind half only
• Tibiae dark

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

iNaturalist: Pterostichus adstrictus at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.

GBIF data for Pterostichus adstrictus | Classification: Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae, Pterostichus

Thumbnails for genus Pterostichus