Adults are roughly 10–15 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Lophyra clathrata
A dune predator living inside one of the most fragile strips of habitat on Earth: the moving beach edge.
About this species
Lophyra clathrata(Dejean, 1825)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Lophyra clathrata is an African tiger beetle associated with sandy shores and dune systems. Adults chase prey on open ground where surface temperature, moisture and competing tiger beetles change metre by metre.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Carabidae · Cicindelinae · Lophyra
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Southern and south-eastern Africa, including Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and South AfricaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Southern and south-eastern Africa, including Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa
Lake shores, coastal beaches, dunes and open sand.
Day-active runner on sunlit sand.
Small beach and dune arthropods.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
Field observations place it in high dunes alongside other tiger beetles, where several fast predators divide the same beach by moisture, elevation and running zone rather than occupying identical ground.
At Malawi lakeshores another very common tiger beetle was observed foraging along the wet edge specifically away from L. clathrata, evidence that this species helps structure the predator community around it.
Its entire habitat can be mechanically erased in hours by beach grooming, vehicles or trampling; because the larvae live in fixed sand burrows, they cannot simply flee when the surface is compacted.
Sources and scientific references
- GBIF — taxon record/search for Lophyra clathrata
- Catalogue of Life — taxon search for Lophyra clathrata
- Werner & Dudley 1998 — Malawi tiger beetles and competitive separation from Lophyra clathrata
- Radisic 2017 — cohabitation of tiger beetles in high dunes
- Kruger-region tiger beetle survey and African records