Description: 9-12mm long green or brassy to reddish, often bi-coloured, diurnal ground beetle. Usually found living in dry grassland, (heaths, downland, clifftops etc.) or bare sandy places. Widespread but local.

NI account: Locally common and much less rare than P. cupreus in northern counties. In Britain, it is less common than P. cupreus in southern England, but extends locally much farther north into Scotland (Luff, 1998).

Ecology: Less thermophilic than P. cupreus, but like that species day-active and often found running in warm sunshine. Generally recorded from wetter habitats, including peatlands, but also known from arable land in Europe.

Distribution: A Eurasian temperate species (75) found across the whole of Europe, except the south and extreme north, and Siberia to the Pacific coast.

Similar Species: Pterostichus cupreus: head finely punctate; outer pronotal fovea closer to side margin than to inner fovea

Key Identification Features:

• Large, black with strong metallic reflections
• Three basal antennal segments with a keel (Fig. 59)
• Head almost impunctate
• Outer pronotal fovea half way between margin and inner fovea

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

iNaturalist: Poecilus versicolor at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.

GBIF data for Poecilus versicolor | Classification: Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae, Poecilus

Thumbnails for genus Poecilus