Amara infima
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Invertebrate > insect - beetle (Coleoptera) > Ground beetle |
| Red List Status: | Near Threatened (Not Relevant) [NT(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Amara infima |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (Duftschmid, 1812) |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | Telfer, 2016 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Formerly recorded on heathland sites in the Thames Heaths and Bedfordshire and on the coasts of Kent and Lincolnshire. All post 1990 records are from Thetford Forest and other sites in Breckland. Though classed as Near Threatened in the last red list review it has potentially undergone a significant contraction in range. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Modern records (last 30 years) confined to Breckland, all post 1995 from part of Thetford Forest. Requires targeted action to investigate this apparent contraction in range. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | This species would potentially benefit from untargeted management that maintains open heath on sandy soil. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 2. Biological status assessment exists |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Unknown |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | A local species of sandy heaths and coastal grassland or dunes. There is no published evidence to suggest why A. infima has apparently contracted to Thetford Forest - the majority of former records were from sites in Surrey that are still well worked. It would be helpful to identify if it still occurs in this area, either by targeted searches of the locations with more recent records orby piggybacking on monitoring for other scarce ground beetle species in Breckland where there is overlap in habitat requirements. This species was not included in the Breckland Ground Beetles Project (2015). |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Targeted survey of the area of Thetford Forest (Thetford Warren Lodge) from where the most recent records from 1999 to 2003 where made.
Action targets: 2. Biological status assessment exists
Action type: Status survey/review
Duration: 2 years
Scale of Implementation: 1 site
High priority sites: Thetford Warren Lodge, Thetford Forest
Comments:
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.