Adults are approximately 13–18 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Therates latreillei pseudobipunctatus
An Indonesian island subspecies defined by two small elytral marks that separate it from a wider, notoriously variable species complex.
About this species
Therates latreillei pseudobipunctatusWiesner, 1988
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Therates latreillei pseudobipunctatus is an Indonesian semi-arboreal tiger beetle named in 1988. It belongs to a species complex in which tiny differences in elytral markings and body proportions diagnose geographically separated forms.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Carabidae · Cicindelinae · Therates
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
IndonesiaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Indonesia
Tropical forest vegetation on Indonesian islands.
Diurnal semi-arboreal predator.
Small foliage-dwelling arthropods.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
The subspecific name means “false two-spotted”: a pair of discrete pale marks became important enough to encode directly into the animal’s scientific identity.
It was formally named only in 1988, demonstrating that even large, brilliantly coloured predators in inhabited tropical islands can remain taxonomically unresolved until very recently.
Its long legs and narrow thorax are a vertical-forest solution: the beetle can turn on stems, accelerate over leaves and launch between perches without the broad footprint of a ground runner.