Necklace Ground Beetle (Carabus monilis)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Invertebrate > insect - beetle (Coleoptera) > Ground beetle |
| Red List Status: | Endangered (Not Relevant) [EN(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: | Carabus monilis |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | Fabricius, 1792 |
| 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: | Declining. Recent (post 2010) records from throughout the former range of C. monilis suggest a general decline rather than range contraction, reasons not well understood. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | C. monilis should benefit from untargeted habitat management, but targeted monitoring to establish habitat use by this species in areas where it is still relatively common may help to identify more species specific actions, reasons for its decline are otherwise not fully established and based on reasoned speculation. |
| 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: | Flightless species so depends on connectivity of habitats to maintain populations over the long term. As a generalist predator and scavenger in sites rich in larger invertebrates it will benefit from untargeted habitat management that increases structural diversity. |
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: | In grasslands, scrub, arable fields and other open habitats on free-draining soils (also from grassland / woodland mosaics) in southern and central England north to Yorkshire. South Oxfordshire and Berkshire in the Thames Valley appears to be a modern stronghold in England. A generalist predator and scavenger, so main factor in thinning of records post 1980 may be fertiliser and pesticide input (Telfer 2016). The species is flightless so lack of habitat connectivity will impact the long-term viability of populations and it may therefore benefit from habit management at a landscape scale. Populations in many areas may be in extinction debt, but recovery potential assessed as 'Unknown' as there is evidence of an isolated populations at an urban location persisting for 50 years or more (at Whiteknights Park, Reading in Berkshire) with no suitable habitat connectivity into the surrounding landscape. This suggests isolated populations in habitat remnants may be recoverable sometime after landscape change has occurred, but absent nationwide nature recovery this species will continue to decline. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Targeted surveys, for example on sites with (and similar sites without) recent records to establish the distribution of C. monilis in an apparent modern stronghold.
Action targets: 4. Autecology and pressures understood
Action type: Status survey/review
Duration: 2 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites: Thames Valley area of Oxfordshire and Berkshire which is a focus for records post 2010.
Comments:
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Investigate habitat requirements of C. monilis, for example by conducting more detailed surveys of occupied and apparently unoccupied sites identified in Key Action 1, and identify any other factors (such as habitat extent, landscape characteristics, pesticide input) which determine the likelihood of the species being present.
Action targets: 4. Autecology and pressures understood
Action type: Scientific research
Duration: 2 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 20 sites
High priority sites: Sites identified by Key Action 1
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.