Description: A pale, 4.5-5.5mm long, yellowish-brown ground beetle with black head and red pronotum. Found in reed beds and tall marginal vegetation near water along the east and south coasts. Climbs vegetation.

NI account: Locally distributed along south and east of a line from Antrim to Galway where it may be abundant in coastal dune slacks and fens inland.

Ecology: Tends to be restricted to well-drained soils or mesotrophic wetlands inland where it inhabits tussocks and tall vegetation in the vicinity of water. Often recorded in company with Dromius linearis and D. melanocephalus. There is a single record for arable land (Ballywalter, Down), but in southern Britain it is regarded as an important predator of cereal aphids, hibernating in grass tussocks such as cocksfoot on field boundaries (Thomas et al., 1992).

Distribution: A European Southern-temperate species (83) recorded from the extreme south of Fennoscandia, and the British Isles south to Iberia and north Africa and east to Asia Minor.

Similar Species: (Other Demetrias spp: temples glabrous)

Key Identification Features:

• Small, flat, elongate, with small pronotum
• Pronotum more or less parallel-sided and truncate
• Head with constricted neck
• 4th tarsal segments deeply bilobed (Fig. 95), claws simple or with few teeth
• Temples hairy

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

iNaturalist: Demetrias atricapillus at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.

GBIF data for Demetrias atricapillus | Classification: Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae, Demetrias

Thumbnails for genus Demetrias