Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle

Cicindela sexguttata — the six-spotted tiger beetle — is the most-recognized tiger beetle in eastern North America and one of the most-photographed beetles in Eastern US macro nature photography. The species is widespread across deciduous forests from southern Canada south through the eastern US to the Gulf Coast and west to the Great Plains. Adults are 12-14 mm long with brilliant METALLIC EMERALD GREEN body coloration and (usually) six small white spots on the elytra (wing covers) — though the spots are variable, and some individuals lack them entirely. The species' defining behavior is high-speed sprinting predation. Tiger beetles (family Cicindelidae) are among the FASTEST RUNNING ARTHROPODS on Earth — they sprint after small prey (ants, flies, springtails) across forest paths and bare ground at speeds that briefly exceed the visual processing capacity of the beetle's own compound eyes. The beetle becomes TEMPORARILY BLIND during peak sprint velocity (the photoreceptors cannot keep up with the rate of incoming visual information) and must stop periodically to recalibrate visually before sprinting again. The behavior is one of the most-cited examples in arthropod neurobiology of a system pushed to its physiological limits. The cousin species Cicindela hudsoni holds the world arthropod speed record at 9 km/h — which sounds slow until scaled: at the beetle's body size (12 mm), this is equivalent to a human running 168 km/h. The six-spotted tiger beetle is a major beneficial predator of small forest-floor arthropods. Larvae are equally extraordinary — they live in vertical burrows in soil, anchor themselves at the burrow entrance with hooked dorsal armor, and ambush passing prey by snatching them with massive sickle-like jaws. The species is widespread, harmless to humans, and a flagship beetle of eastern US forest natural history.