Description: A 6-7mm long attractive bright orange and black predatory ground beetle very similar to B. bullatus. Found rarely in turlough margins.

NI account: Added to the Irish List by Speight (1976b) from Garryland Wood, Lough Coole, south-east Galway. There have been several subsequent records for the Lough Coole catchment including Timoleague turlough. Unknown elsewhere in Ireland and very rare in Britain.

Ecology: In its Irish haunts found under stones on bare silt or gravel by drying turloughs on wooded limestone.

Distribution: A Suboceanic temperate species (72), scattered and rare across west and central Europe from southern Sweden and the British Isles to southern France and Switzerland.

Similar Species: B. bullatus: first segment of antennae pale, rufous; elytra less iridescent; eurytopic Badister unipustulatus: size >7mm; head disproprtionately large; scutellum as pale as the rest of the elytra

Key Identification Features:

• Small/medium, elytra very iridescent and with fine, impunctate striae
• Mandibles asymmetric, right mandible having a large dorsal tubercle and notch (Fig. 104), as bullatus
• Second segment of antennae very short, first more or less darkened
• Pronotum rufous, head black, elytra rufous with black 'hook' mark
• Size ~7mm
• Scutellum darker than rest of elytra
• Rare, wooded turloughs only

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

iNaturalist: Badister meridionalis at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.

GBIF data for Badister meridionalis | Classification: Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae, Badister

Thumbnails for genus Badister