Jewel Beetle

Description:

Adults are 3mm- 100mm long, but typically less than 20mm. The bodies are brilliantly metallic and are bronze, green, blue or black, particularly on the ventral side of the body and on the dorsal abdominal surface. Form compact, elongate, wedge-shaped and characteristic of family. They are hard bodied and inflexible. They are numbered at roughly 720 North American species and approximately 15,000 species total (Bland, 1978). This family resembles Click Beetles with similar tarsal segmentation, hard, sclerotized bodies and antennal serration. They differ from the Click Beetles in the pronotal shape, abdominal region and coloration (Ross, 1965). Also similar, yet unrelated, are the Longhorn beetles. Antennae are filiform and serrate, and are not clubbed. Palps are long and flexible. The prothorax is without notopleural sutures. The abdomen is nearly or completely covered by the elytra. Abdomen with 5 or 6 visible sterna, the first 2 are partly fused, and the suture between them is feeble. This suture is much less visible than the other abdominal sutures.

Habitat:

Habitat often will include dead or dying trees, logs and debris. They are also found on tree foliage, flowers and shrubs. This family seems to favor a wide variety of trees, including both deciduous and coniferous trees. Many of the larger beetles in this family can be found in sunny locations. The coloring acts as excellent camauflage for foliage and bark. Some buprestids who lay their eggs in freshly burned timber are attracted to smoke. Members of this family have been recorded to gather at smoke stacks of factories, and there is one account of these insects being seen coming upwind to a fire built for a monster pep rally at a Western University (Lanham, 1964). Most lay their eggs in crevices of the bark.