Lake Wales Ridge, central Florida, USA
Fine-art photographic collection
Cicindela (Cicindelidia) highlandensis
A tiger beetle confined to a handful of fire-shaped sand islands in Florida.
About this species
Highlands Tiger Beetle
Cicindela (Cicindelidia) highlandensisChoate, 1984
Information reviewed15 July 2026
The Highlands tiger beetle exists only on the Lake Wales Ridge, where ancient sand scrub forms a chain of isolated habitat islands. It requires patches of bare sand kept open by disturbance and periodic fire.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Carabidae · Cicindela
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Lake Wales Ridge, central Florida, USABroad documented range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Open, well-drained white-sand scrub and sandhill habitat.
Adults are active on bare sand during warm periods.
Predatory on small arthropods.
What makes this species remarkable?
Its entire global range lies within the narrow Lake Wales Ridge, one of the most geographically restricted tiger-beetle ranges on Earth.
Larvae live for months in vertical burrows in exposed sand and vanish when vegetation closes over the ground.
Fire is essential to its survival because it reopens the bare sandy hunting and nesting patches that the beetle cannot create itself.