Cephalota circumdata
Cephalota circumdata leonschaeferi
Cephalota circumdata or Taenidia circumdata is a tiger beetles of the genus Cephalota and the subgenus Taenidia. He is instantly recognizable as Tiger Beetle by his behavior and his appearance, but the elytra are in contrast to most sand beetles mostly brightly colored. In addition, the species has an interesting disjunct distribution. It comes in five Mediterranean subspecies, on the Black Sea in Turkey.
Figure 1: elytra drawing structural construction: partially colored right wing ceiling blue outlined: Humeralmakel, Humerallunula yellow outline: medium binding outlined green: Apikalmakel, Apikallunula
Features
With twelve to fifteen millimeters in body length Cephalota circumdata belongs to the medium-sized sand beetles.
The head falls on the eyes very prominent, which open a wide field of the animal. The mouthparts are directed obliquely forward and downward. The white upper lip is strikingly large and provided with only a few hairs at the anterior margin ( Fig. 2). In the middle of their front edge sits a forwardly directed tooth. The upper jaw are dark, bright, sharp drawn out at the root and equipped on the inside with three sharp teeth. The eleven-membered sensors are turned in front of the eyes to the base of the upper jaw. The first four elements are metallic and shiny, the following matt with fine hairs appearing. The first antennal segment is busy with several bristles ( Fig. 5). Transformed Besides the four -membered lip buttons (Fig. 6, right blue tightened ) and also four-membered pine buttons (Fig. 6, right green ) is the external loading of the mandible nor to a two-tier pine probe (Fig. 6, right yellow). All buttons are narrow and long, yellow- brown or yellow; their end link is darker in color, but not metallic green blue. The cheeks are bare (Fig. 5).
The front chest is laterally adjacent long white hair overgrown (Fig. 5). It is narrower than the head and elytra.
The basic color of the elytra is as head and pronotum coppery brown or greenish brown. The white elytra drawing is basically only three spots; the moon patch on the shoulders (blue Humerallunula, Humeralmakel, Figure 1, top frame), a binding agent (Fig. 1, yellow) and a moon-shaped spot at the back end of the elytra ( Apikalmakel Fig. 2, green). These spots, however, are so broad in scope that they merge along the outer edge of the elytra, so that the elytra are mostly white and only in the area of the elytra seam, the basic color is retained. The anterior branch of the Humeralmakel (Fig. 2 tinted blue ) dominates inside the rear angle of the pronotum, the distance between the two Humeralmakel each other is thus narrower than the pronotum. The rear remains the basic color can act as the symbol of a crown on the white wing coverts. In some subspecies of the posterior branch of the Humerallunula may greatly reduced and the binding agent to be dissolved in spots.
The underside is partially hairy (Fig. 3) and iridescent metallic green to blue. Of the six visible abdominal sections, the first three are grown together. The legs are very long, their tarsi are five-membered. The rails are made of metal with a reddish base.
The subspecies differ in the basic color and shape of the elytra and the expansion of the elytra drawing.
Way of life
The beetles are active during the day and only come with sufficient heating of the environment from their hiding places. They are shy and move with great speed over the ground. At the slightest disturbance they fly to. On the often white by salinity underground cloaked excellent.
They feed predatory and running during the warm time of day in search of prey around. Because of their speed, these escapes them rare. During mating, the males hold the females firmly with pliers between pronotum and elytra, whereupon those to defend themselves vigorously. During such moments both common prey of small mammals, robber flies or other insects are predatory. The females lay eggs in the soil, where they remain until hatching. The hatched larvae dig a hole with vertical access to the outside. In this the larvae by means of a pair of support hooks on the fifth abdominal segment at a high speed can move up and down. The rounded head is bent and large enough so that it can close the opening of the Ganges. Detects the larva prey, she leaves the cave entrance and quickly pounces on it. She grabs the prey with its sharp mandibles and retreats to the cave, on the ground they devoured their victim.
On the cave floor pupation takes place. But even as adult animals, the animals move back if too much heat or cold in self-dug caves.
Dissemination
The distribution of the species is strongly disjoint. The species occurs mainly on the Mediterranean coast before, but also to salt pans and lakes in Turkey, up to 1000 m above sea level Next they settled along the western coast of the Black Sea shores of brackish water lakes and salt pans and is also found in Central and Eastern Spain. The locations are all located in the territory of the former Tethys. Probably the way to the flat banks of the brackish water lakes in the western part of the Sarmatian Sea, the northern part arm of the Tethys, emerged. Their habitat is sandy bays. Since these are usually separated from each other by rugged rocky coastline, the migration ability was positively selected. Alternating cold and warm periods of mountain building and the type were isolated in the present distribution areas. C. c. leonschaeferi (Fig. 2, 3 and 4 ) can be found in the northwestern Mediterranean, C. c. imperialis in Spain and North Africa, C. c. circumdata (Fig. 1, 5 and 6) in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, C. c. capadocia only in Central - West Anatolia, C. c. hattusae contrast, in Central East Anatolia.