Salt creek tiger beetle

In November, 2001, one citizen wrote in to the Lincoln Journal-Star newspaper and wanted to know the value of the Salt Creek tiger beetle.  This person even went so far as to say that if we couldn’t show the value of the beetle, we should just “step on it”. Unfortunately, this mentality is not all that uncommon.  Are flowers important? Bald eagles? Landmarks, like Chimney Rock? Without getting into a philosophical debate about what constitutes “value”, we can list what we consider valuable assets of the Salt Creek tiger beetle.
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1 Aesthetic value.  Okay, it’s not a Baltimore Oriole or even one of its shiny purple or green tiger beetle relatives.  But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  If it were prettier, would it be more valuable?
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2 Bio-indicator species.  Because the Salt Creek tiger beetle is so habitat-restricted, its presence indicates a high quality saline marsh.  It is therefore an indicator of a healthy environment, much like the Regal fritillary butterfly presence indicates a high quality prairie.
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3 Species in the process?  The Salt Creek tiger beetle is currently considered a subspecies (a geographically-isolated population of a species) and it has been speculated that it has been isolated from other populations from the last glaciation (10,000+ years ago).  Morphologically, it is distinct from other subspecies within the species (as far as subspecies go).  It has been suggested that over time, the Salt Creek tiger beetle could develop into a distinct species.
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4 Beneficial species. The Salt Creek tiger beetle feeds on other insects, some of which may cause harm to humans, such as mosquitoes and deer flies. It is therefore considered beneficial to humans.
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5 Food-chain value. The eastern Nebraska saline wetland is an ecosystem, with animals and plants interacting in many complex ways. Tiger beetles feed on other insects and arthropods, and are in turn fed on by robber flies and other predators. We don’t know what effect, if any, removal of the Salt Creek tiger beetle from the ecosystem would be.
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6 Scientific model. As stated earlier, tiger beetles make excellent models for studying many components of science, such as ecology (including population dynamics, competition, etc.), physiology, anatomy, evolution, behavior, conservation, and genetics.