Moor ground beetle (Carabus menetriesi)

• length: 24 mm (maximum)

For more than 200 years natural scientists had been recording, collecting and researching indigenous plants and animals. Whereas there was already a good level of knowledge about higher plants and vertebrates, there were still new things to be learned about invertebrates. Moor ground beetles were discovered for the first time in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 1979 in the Peene Valley. Other relicts in Germany were known only in Bavaria and Saxony.

The main area of distribution of the flightless ground beetle ranges from the western edge of Siberia to the eastern part of Poland. It is assumed that the populations in the Peene Valley were relicts from a postglacial dispersion phase of this cold loving species. There are still many unanswered questions in relation to biology, ecology and population dynamics.