blue dot ground beeetle

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Sat May 20, 2006 4:29 am

Tiger beetles and ground beetles are probably my favourite insects. They are fierce predators and in real close up they have beautiful colours!

This is probably a Carabus speciees. but I have never seen it before and I can't find it in books. Does anyone know the species? It was less than a centimeter long from head to rear.

Wim

Beetleman · Post by **Beetleman** » Sat May 20, 2006 4:44 am

Hi Wim, really great shot of a beautiful beetle. I am going to say that it is a Tiger beetle (Cicindelidae). The Pronotum (thorax) is narrower than the wing covers and the eyes and head are wider then the pronotum. On Ground Beetles (Carabidae) the head at eyes is nearly always narrower than the pronotum. I have never seen a tiger beetle I have not liked. They are always very beautiful and very fast. There are supposed to be over 86,000 beetles in the world, I think you would need a lot of fieldguides to ID them all.

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Sat May 20, 2006 4:53 am

Great shot Wim.

Never seen one with blue spots on it before. Looks as though the legs have a blue tinge also. Presently they are trying to catalog all the beetles found in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, which is in North Carolina and Tennessee both. That is a monumentous undertaking, I wish them luck.

crocoite · Post by **crocoite** » Sat May 20, 2006 5:06 am

Wow! Great shot Wim. Can you post a closeup of the head? Those jaws look vicious!

Regards
Steve

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sat May 20, 2006 9:06 am

Elaphrus, perhaps. See http://bugguide.net/node/view/49522/bgpage.

If so, that puts it in tribe Elaphrini of subfamily Carabinae of family Carabidae. At least according to http://www.fsca-dpi.org/Coleoptera/Mike/carabid.htm. But a different reference apparently says that it's subfamily Elaphrinae (http://bugguide.net/node/view/49523). Sheesh!

The taxonomy of "tiger" versus "ground" beetles has been revised over the years. At one time the tiger beetles had a separate family Cicindelidae, but now they're bundled as subfamily Cicindelinae under Carabidae.

Either that or they've been split out again and I just haven't heard of it. These changes happen pretty frequently. I suppose that in the next few years there will be a big pulse of reorganization as DNA sequencing gets widely applied and we figure out what the relationship tree really looks like. But DNA may not help in deciding where to draw the line about what's worth being a subfamily versus a family. Tastes differ, even among taxonomists!

A very pretty beetle, Wim -- and well shot, as always!

--Rik

Beetleman · Post by **Beetleman** » Sat May 20, 2006 9:24 pm

I think Rik gets first place with his ID. With the link that Rik found, I wonder if the beetle’s range extends up into New Hampshire. Virginia is not that far away. One observation I notice, both pictures of the beetles appear to be in moist locations. Moss in Wims pic and what looks like a mud flat in the other pic. I have to put this one on my “MUST SEARCH FOR” list.