Golden Buprestid

• Its larvae can stay inside the wood for decades if it dries out: adults have emerged from beams and furniture more than forty years after the tree was felled, with a documented record of fifty-one years.
• Its hard, iridescent elytra have been used as jewellery in several cultures.
• It detects freshly burnt or damaged wood from a distance thanks to infrared receptors, an ability found in several jewel beetles.
• Its metallic green and copper are structural colour, produced by layers of the cuticle, and they do not degrade with time: museum specimens keep their shine a century on.
• It is famous for its extreme larval longevity in dry wood. Adults have been documented emerging from beams and furniture decades after the timber was cut; the most frequently cited record exceeds fifty years.
• This happens because dry, worked wood is an extremely poor food, and the larva prolongs its development indefinitely until it has built up sufficient reserves.
• Buprestids are called jewel beetles precisely because of these colours, and several cultures have used their elytra as ornament in embroidery and jewellery.
• The adult is diurnal and heat-loving, and is seen on sunlit trunks in summer.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Conifers of the forests of western North America

Size at birth

The larva is whitish, legless and flattened, with the thoracic segments wider than the abdomen, and reaches up to 38 mm

Gestation / incubation

The female lays the eggs in cracks in the bark of recently dead or dying conifers; the larva bores through the wood for 2 to 4 years under normal conditions

Sources consulted: Smith, revisiones de Buprestidae · Natural History Museum de Londres · Universidad Estatal de Oregón, Extension Service · Montana Public Radio, ficha Golden buprestid · ficha de especie de Buprestis aurulenta · ficha de especie · University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station

Best time: The adults fly in spring and summer and come to recently dead conifers, often affected by fire or lightning