Many beetles are dark-colored and go about their business in the underbrush, unseen by human eyes. Six-spotted Tiger Beetles (Cicindela sexguttata), on the other hand, are hard to miss—their metallic-green bodies sparkle as they perch in the open, like this one that I spotted on Monday in the middle of a sun-lit forest trail in Prince William Forest Park.
The beetle’s common name refers to the six small white spots on the beetle’s metallic-green elytra (the beetle’s hardened wing cases), although the number of spots is somewhat variable. I think that I can see six spots on this beetle, but have sometimes seen as many as eight spots in the past.
As I was doing a bit of research a few years ago, I recall stumbling upon the fact that elytra is the plural form of elytron, following the the same pattern as “criterion” and its plural form “criteria.” For what it is worth, spell-check highlights elytron as an unknown word. English is a strange language.
Yesterday I came across this fun fact about tiger beetles at the University of Minnesota Department of Entomology website. “Tiger beetles’ long legs allow them to dart across the ground at high speeds. In fact, they can run so fast that their eyes can’t keep up, rendering them momentarily blind. This is why they only run short distances at a time.” Wow!
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 