Bembidion doris (Panzer, 1796)

Occurs throughout the southeast form Dorset to the Wash, further north the distribution is patchy and mostly centred around Warwickshire, The Humber and The Lake District. There are records scattered throughout Wales and only a few, coastal or near coastal, from the West Country. In Scotland records are mostly western in the south and eastern in the Grampians and Highlands north to the Dornoch Firth. With the exception of the Isle of Wight and Anglesea there are no island records (NBN). Around Watford the species is very local; it is abundant across Bricket Wood Common but beyond this we have recorded only the occasional specimen from Croxley Moor. Generally found near water and active on open soil or among vegetation in warm weather; during the summer we have found them in abundance among cracked clay and leaf litter on dry pond beds at Bricket Wood. A spring breeder but may generally occur a little later than other wetland carabids; our first 2011 record was from May 24, some two months after first sampling Bricket Wood and when many other wetland carabids had been abundant for some time. On that first sighting they were present in huge numbers and they remained common until early September, our final opportunity to sample the area. With a X10 lens the species soon becomes obvious in the field; the strongly convergent frontal furrows are distinctive, this character is also present in the subgenus Trepanes (B. articulatum and B. octomaculatum) but here the elytra are either pale or have pale markings.

3.1-3.7mm (Luff, 2007) Entire body shining black with a faint metallic lustre (this is usually obvious in sunlight), elytra with ill defined pale apical and marginal subapical marks, suture sometimes also pale in apical third. In immature specimens (which we have found in August and September) the elytra are dark brown. Antennae dark brown to black with the first segment and the base of 2-4 pale. Legs vary from pale to rather dark brown. Head smooth and shiny, frontal furrows deeply impressed and strongly converging (diagnostic). Pronotum transverse and strongly margined, widest before middle and gently sinuate. Base strongly impressed and often wrinkled but without the well defined �pits� seen in Trepanes. Elytral margins evenly curved and strongly bordered, basal margin absent inside base of fifth stria. Each with six punctured striae which become weaker or absent in apical third, seventh variously defined from a short series of weakly impressed punctures to being about as strong as the sixth. Basal segment of male protarsus dilated.

Description from six Bricket Wood specimens; 2males and 4 females.


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