Adults are about 16–21 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Therates labiatus
A large semi-arboreal tiger beetle whose expanded pale mouth shield sits above mandibles built for cutting prey from foliage.
About this species
Therates labiatus(Fabricius, 1801)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Therates labiatus is a large tiger beetle distributed from Indonesia through New Guinea to the Solomon Islands. Adults hunt on low vegetation and in several tropical forest types.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Carabidae · Cicindelinae · Therates
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Solomon IslandsBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands
Lowland rainforest, heath, limestone and littoral forest vegetation.
Diurnal semi-arboreal predator.
Small insects captured on leaves, stems and bark.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
At up to about 21 millimetres it is a substantial Therates, yet it retains the narrow waist and long legs needed to manoeuvre through foliage rather than across a flat beach.
The name labiatus refers to the conspicuous lip-like labrum that projects above the toothed mandibles, producing a layered mouth assembly unlike a simple pair of jaws.
Specimen surveys have recorded it across multiple forest systems — including heath, limestone and littoral forest — showing one predator operating in structurally very different tropical vegetation.