The central peaks of Saint Helena are home to an extraordinary set of ground beetles of the tribe Bembidiini, which are strikingly morphologically different from bembidiines found elsewhere. They have been found to form a clade of genetically similar species with their sister group being "Bembidion alsium" from the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. The African subgenus "Omotaphus" is the sister group to this pair, suggesting that both the Saint Helena and Reunion beetles were derived from single dispersal events from a now-extinct African lineage that was a sister to "Omotaphus". All of the Saint Helena bembidiine species are threatened by habitat destruction and invasive species, with some likely to already be extinct.