This was my first tiger beetle in Singapore! And what a beauty, blueish-green metallic from top to bottom, and with orange femurs and white feet on all legs as a contrast. The big head and the slim body make them an eyecatcher!
We all know the carnivorous ladybugs. Though they kill aphids, most people consider them cute. Tiger beetles are maybe somehow the grown-up version of Ladybugs. They are fast hunters with large teeth (mandibles).
I have seen three species of tiger beetles in Singapore and saw two feeding on eggs (Bug eggs?) But searching for “tiger beetle with prey” gives you all kinds of grasshoppers, flies, and other insects in a tiger beetle´s mandibles. This is quite remarkable since most other beetles (it´s 350.000 species!) feed on nectar, leaves, plant juice, dung. Predatory are approx. 2600 species of Tiger beetles, 6000 species of Ladybugs, and almost 3000 species of water scavenger beetles. That makes 3.3% of all beetles predators, the black sheep of the group! But maybe we’ll discover other predatory beetles in the coming pics?!
And as often, the more you read, the more you get confused. Tiger beetles and ground beetles are two terms that might be mixed up sometimes. Our beetle belongs to the tribe Collyridini, which is in the subfamily Cicindelinae which seem all to be called tiger beetles. They are in the family Carabidae, which are generally called ground beetles, and contains 40k species. I think it is a tiger beetle.
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