Anthaxia: More Modest Jewels

The jewel beetles of the Buprestidae are best known for their spectacularly patterned exemplars, a couple of which I've presented on this site before. But as with most animal groups renowned in this way, they also include their fair share of less immediately eye-catching members. The species of the genus Anthaxia are among these more modest jewels.

Anthaxia hungarica, photographed by Frayle.

Which is not to say they are unattractive. Anthaxia species still usually have the metallic gloss so widespread among the Buprestidae but they tend to be more uniform in colour, and those colours are often shades of bronze or blue-green rather than yellows or purples. They are also smaller than the species previously shown: a length of 6.5 millimetres would be relatively large for an Anthaxia. Some of the smallest species don't quite make it to three millimetres (Bílý & Kubáň 2010). Nevertheless, Anthaxia are incredibly diverse. Something in the range of 700 species are known from around the world (though they appear to be absent from Australia, with the single species described from Victoria now thought to have been based on a mis-labelled African specimen) and a quick Google Scholar search indicates new species continue to be described regularly. It should come as no surprise that many of these species would be difficult to distinguish without close examination.

Anthaxia scutellaris, a more colourful species of the genus, copyright Hectonichus.

Like other buprestids, Anthaxia species are wood-borers as larvae and flower-feeders as adults. The larvae seem to run the gamut of preferred tree hosts: Anthaxia have been found emerging from hosts ranging from pines to pears, from oleander to oaks. Some species appear to be quite catholic in their tastes: the recorded host list for the most polyphagous known species, A. millefolii, includes maples, chestnuts, carobs, oleanders, pistachios, plums, pears, oaks and rowans (Mifsud & Bílý 2002). Others are more discerning. Species of the subgenus Melanthaxia are only known to feed on conifers (Bílý & Kubáň 2010) and records for A. lucens indicate a dedication to stonefruit trees (Mifsud & Bílý 2002). Nevertheless, the larval hosts of many species remain unknown and there may be surprises. The North American species A. hatchi might be expected to be a conifer feeder like other Melanthaxia species but to date it has been collected in riparian habitats where conifers do not grow (Nelson et al. 1981). Could this member of an otherwise conifer-loving group have developed a taste for the willows and alders amongst which it lives? The question is yet to be answered.

REFERENCES

Bílý, S., & V. Kubáň. 2010. A study on the Nearctic species of the genus Anthaxia (Coleoptera: Buprestidae: Buprestinae: Anthaxiini). Subgenus Melanthaxia. Part I. Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae 50 (2): 535–546.

Mifsud, D., & S. Bílý. 2002. Jewel beetles (Coleoptera, Buprestidae) from the Maltese Islands (central Mediterranean). Central Mediterranean Naturalist 3 (4): 181–188.

The Adrastini

Glyphonyx sp., copyright Mike Quinn.

For the subject of my next post, I drew the click beetle tribe Adrastini. Well, actually, I drew the tribe Synaptini but dibs on that name was originally called by a family of sea cucumbers so it seems that 'Adrastini' should be the tribe's proper name. I described click beetles, and the nature of their click, in an earlier post.

The Adrastini are one of those groups of animals for which there seems to be little known to discuss other than their general morphology. The more typical click beetles tend to be fairly uniform in their general appearance and are often not that easy to distinguish. Adrastins belong to the subfamily Elaterinae and resemble other elaterines in their deflexed mouthparts, arcuate prosternum, open mesocoxal cavities and tarsal claws without basal setae. They differ from other elaterines in having serrate tarsal claws according to Stibick (1979). Mind you, another related group, the Melanotini, are supposed to be distinguished by their pectinate claws and I'm not entirely sure what the difference between 'serrate' and 'pectinate' is supposed to be in this context.

The Adrastini are widespread though they seem to be absent from Australia. Several genera are recognised; one of these, Glyphonyx, is distinctly larger than the rest and includes about half the tribe's known species. As far as I know, the larva has never been described for any member of this group, so what they are doing ecologically remains a largely unknown quantity.

REFERENCE

Stibick, J. N. L. 1979. Classification of the Elateridae (Coleoptera). Relationships and classification of the subfamilies and tribes. Pacific Insects 20 (2–3): 145–186.

Jewels among Beetles

There are many contenders for the title of most stunning-looking insect but there is no question that the jewel beetles have a place among the line-up. Some of these brilliantly coloured insects look as if they could have been sculpted from gleaming metal:

Buprestis niponica, copyright Kohichiro Yoshida.

Buprestis is a genus of jewel beetles found in the Holarctic region, with the greater diversity around the Mediterranean and North America. Somewhere between forty and eighty species are recognised, depending on whether the closely related genera Cypriacis and Yamina are regarded as distinct or not. Species of Buprestis come in a variety of colours, with green, blue or black backgrounds often patterned with yellow or red.

Female Buprestis octoguttata ovipositing, copyright Christian Fischer.

Despite their attractive appearance, jewel beetles are not always welcome. They spend the larval part of their life cycle burrowing into wood so some are known for damaging timbers. The preferred hosts of most Buprestis species, where known, appear to be conifers such as pine, spruce and larch. They primarily attack dead and dying wood, and females of some species are known for searching the trunks of trees following fires to find where protective bark has cracked open (some jewel beetle species in other genera are commonly known as 'fire beetles' in reference to this habit). Buprestis larvae have been claimed to live for extraordinarily long periods. Mature beetles have been observed emerging from furniture and the like multiple decades after the original tree was felled, leading to claims of larval life spans of up to 51 years! It almost goes without saying that such inferences have attracted their share of scepticism, with detractors suggesting the possibility of eggs being laid after the wood was already worked. It is true that the low nutritious value of dry wood might be expected to lead to slow development, but how slow are you willing to believe?

Click! Goes the Beetle

The click beetle Athous haemorrhoidalis, copyright André Karwath.

There have been occasions when I've found myself complaining of the difficulty of recognising particular beetle families. It almost goes without saying, however, that this difficulty does not apply across the board. Whereas some beetle families may indeed be generically small and brown, there are others that are almost instantly recognisable. One such family, for the most part, is the click beetles of the Elateridae.

Click beetles are a cosmopolitan family with well over 900 known species. The majority of click beetles adhere to a consistent basic form: they have elongate, slender bodies, often with distinct longitudinal grooves running down the elytra. The front part of the body (the prothorax) is relatively large, and more or less acutely pointed at the back corners. Between the prothorax and the next part of the body (the mesothorax), the body is strongly constricted top to bottom so that the beetle can be flexibly bent. This distinguishes the Elateridae from most other beetle families (except for a few close relatives), and this is where the 'click' comes in. If the beetle finds itself lying on its back (or wishes to escape from a threat), it is able to arch itself so that the thoracic junction is lifted upwards. On the rear margin of the underside of the prothorax is a notched peg that sits against the front of the mesothorax, holding the two sections apart like the stick in a cartoon crocodile's jaws. This builds up a lot of potential energy that the beetle is able to hold in place until it suddenly releases the peg, which then slams back into a ventral groove at the front of the mesothorax with an audible 'click'. The effect of this sudden release of energy, followed by an equally sudden stop, is to cause the beetle to rapidly bend forwards, much in the manner of a person folding over as they receive a powerful punch to the gut. This self-inflicted gut punch results in the beetle being flung in the air, somersaulting to a hopeful landing on its feet. Evans (1972) conducted an analysis of the click-jumping of the elaterid Athous haemorrhoidalis, which is about a centimetre-and-a-half in length, and found that it could be lifted over a foot above the ground, tumbling several times over the course of a single jump. He calculated that during the jump it could be subjected to an acceleration of up to 3800 ms^-2, equivalent to a force of 380 G, one of the highest acceleration forces known in the animal kingdom (a human subjected to a similar force would soon end up like a satchel of instant pudding). Ribak & Weihs (2011) subsequently found, however, that the beetle has no actual control over its movements once flung and is just as likely to end up flat on its back again as the right way up, requiring it to attempt a second jump.

Fire beetle Pyrophorus sp., copyright Andreas Kay.

Adult click-beetles feed on the juices from plants but larvae may be more diverse in habits, including phytophagous, saprophagous or predaceous forms. Some burrowing phytophagous larvae, known as wireworms, can be notable pests, feeding on the roots and buried seeds of crop plants. Predatory forms, on the other hand, can be quite beneficial: the eyed elater Alaus oculatus of North America, for instance, has larvae that feed on the larvae of other beetles burrowing in wood. The Elateridae also include the fire beetles of South and southern North America, belonging to the tribe Pyrophorini. These beetles have a pair of large bioluminescent spots on their back at the rear of the prothorax. The larvae and even the eggs of fire beetles are similarly bioluminescent, and my guess is that the bioluminescence provides some sort of defense against predation.

Larva of Drilus on a snail, copyright Cécile Bassaglia.

Not all elaterids match the family's standard morphology, however. An analysis of elaterid phylogeny by Kundrata & Bocak (2011) found that a few groups that had previously been classified as separate families were in fact derived subgroups of the Elateridae. The 'Cebrionidae' (possibly a polyphyletic assemblage in the elaterid subfamily Elaterinae) are softer-bodied than other elaterids and lack the ability to click (presumably because their cuticle does not provide the resistance for a clicking mechanism to work). Female cebrionids may be flightless, with reduced wings and/or elytra. Even more dramatically altered are the females of the tribe Drilini (previously recognised as the Drilidae), the false firely beetles, which are larviform in appearance with only the head metamorphosing to an adult appearance. The larvae of Drilini feed on snails, and have a lifestyle that straddles the boundary between predator and parasite. Rather than killing and eating the prey snail immediately, they crawl into its shell and feed on it slowly; it may take several days for the larva's victim to actually meet its demise.

REFERENCES

Evans, M. E. G. 1972. The jump of the click beetle (Coleoptera, Elateridae)—a preliminary study. Journal of Zoology 167: 319–336.

Kundrata, R., & L. Bocak. 2011. The phylogeny and limits of Elateridae (Insecta, Coleoptera): is there a common tendency of click beetles to soft-bodiedness and neoteny? Zoologica Scripta 40: 364–378.

Ribak, G., & D. Weihs. 2011. Jumping without using legs: the jump of the click-beetles (Elateridae) is morphologically constrained. PLoS ONE 6 (6): e20871. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020871.