Crickets have always been popular with my cicindelids. Not sure about keeping them socially, but you can sex them by mandible shape. Males have longer, thinner jaws that they use to grasp the female during mating. Males are a bit smaller, but are still pretty close in size to the females.
C. sexguttata can be found just about anywhere as long as there is sand and water somewhat close. Other species are much more tied to sandy areas with water. Depending on the species, you can find them near creeks, rivers, lakes, ponds, marshes, etc. There are some species though that inhabit sandy areas further away from water (blowouts).
Thanks a ton for the advice and links, pannaking! I live in the mountains where we don't begin to approach the kind of diversity that is found in the coastal plain, so I mostly see sexguttata and nothing else. The C. splendida are a new one for me this year and I found them at a mafic rock outcrop site nearby, along with sexguttata. Just about every individual I saw was different from the last, with more or less white (the girl I grabbed is very pretty, but only out of luck--the deciding factor was my reflexes). I've really only just started paying attention, so while I know I've seen some creekside species with brown elytra in the past, those could be four or five different things in my area. Now that we've had some nice weather I want to get out and see if I can find a few other species. The brilliant green is hard to beat for beauty but I would love to see some of the white/cream species. I have a hunch I might find Ellipsoptera gratiosa at a specific site (we don't get many places with sandy soils but there are a few local records of these). I need to force myself to work on my thesis project but if I get a chance to get anything interesting I will definitely update. I'm hooked on tiger beetles now
No problem, glad to help! They are one of my favorite beetle families (or sub-family, I suppose), so it's always nice to come across someone else who is interested in them! I've always wanted to keep C. splendida, but haven't had much luck finding them around here (I know they are about 3 hours south of here though, along with C. unipunctata). Granted, I'm in central Illinois now, so all the corn definitely cuts down on variety lol. I've manged to come across a few interesting species though (C. repanda repanda, C. punctulata, Tetracha virginica and of course, loads of C. sexgutatta. There are a few other places I want to try out before I start fieldwork for my thesis, so hopefully I'll catch a few more species. Gotta love all the thesis work, right?Thanks a ton for the advice and links, pannaking! I live in the mountains where we don't begin to approach the kind of diversity that is found in the coastal plain, so I mostly see sexguttata and nothing else. The C. splendida are a new one for me this year and I found them at a mafic rock outcrop site nearby, along with sexguttata. Just about every individual I saw was different from the last, with more or less white (the girl I grabbed is very pretty, but only out of luck--the deciding factor was my reflexes). I've really only just started paying attention, so while I know I've seen some creekside species with brown elytra in the past, those could be four or five different things in my area. Now that we've had some nice weather I want to get out and see if I can find a few other species. The brilliant green is hard to beat for beauty but I would love to see some of the white/cream species. I have a hunch I might find Ellipsoptera gratiosa at a specific site (we don't get many places with sandy soils but there are a few local records of these). I need to force myself to work on my thesis project but if I get a chance to get anything interesting I will definitely update. I'm hooked on tiger beetles now
There are a couple of larvae in the red clay banks in my yard so I'm thinking about digging those up and seeing if I can keep them to adulthood.