Adults are about 12–17 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Lophyridia concolor
A marine-beach predator whose larvae live in permanent sand burrows and whose population visibly collapses under holiday-season footfall.
About this species
Lophyridia concolor(Dejean, 1822)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Lophyridia concolor is a Mediterranean and western Asian tiger beetle specialised for open marine beaches and saline sandy habitats. Adults hunt over the surface while larvae wait at the mouths of vertical burrows.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Carabidae · Cicindelinae · Lophyridia
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea region and western AsiaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea region and western Asia
Unvegetated marine beaches, coastal sand and saline flats.
Fast-running diurnal predator.
Small beach arthropods.
Solitary adults; larvae occupy individual burrows.
What makes this species remarkable?
In a controlled beach comparison, adult activity was about forty per cent lower in the tourist-used section than on the undisturbed shore during the visitor season.
The larva cannot retreat to another habitat when people arrive: it is anchored to a single vertical burrow, so trampling and sand compaction can destroy both its trap and its home.
This beetle turns a strip of apparently empty sand into a two-level hunting system — adults sprint across the surface while larvae ambush prey from below it.