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 & environment

Conifers of the forests of western North America

Sources consulted: Smith, revisiones de Buprestidae; Natural History Museum de Londres; Universidad Estatal de Oregón, Extension Service