Adults are approximately 8–12 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Pentacomia punctum
A Neotropical tiger beetle small enough to be overlooked yet mapped from thousands of museum specimens.
About this species
Pentacomia punctum(Klug, 1834)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Pentacomia punctum is a South American tiger beetle documented in Paraguay and neighbouring regions. Its identity is maintained through detailed elytral pattern, body sculpture and male genital characters.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Carabidae · Cicindelinae · Pentacomia
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Paraguay and neighbouring parts of South AmericaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Paraguay and neighbouring parts of South America
Open riverine ground, sandy tracks and sunlit soil.
Day-active visual predator.
Small arthropods.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
A Paraguayan study analysed 2,388 tiger-beetle specimens to reconstruct national distributions, turning scattered labels into a geographic picture that includes this easily missed species.
The name “punctum” reflects a beetle whose identification can hinge on minute pale spots and punctures; their exact position separates it from more than fifty other Pentacomia species in the Americas.
Its larvae reverse the adult hunting style completely: instead of running, they anchor in vertical soil burrows and launch the head upward as a trapdoor when prey crosses the entrance.