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Banded Jewel Beetle

Coraebus sp

Photo by SukanyaDatta
Published on Project Noah
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22.5417, 88.3164

Field Notes

Description:

It looked like a bit of dirt really, on the leaves of a climbing Jasminum plant. It is only in the photographs that I can see the designs on its back.

Habitat:

My garden.

Notes:

Is it laying eggs? The dark egg-like stuff was not quite under the insect though....maybe it had finished the business of laying?

Family Buprestidae

Species ID Suggestions

Jewel beetle

Family Buprestidae

Banded Jewel beetle

Coraebus sp.

Comments (3)

Your observation, Sukanya, may be a new discovery. Usually, entomologists are not botanists at same time. They see a beetle on a "leaf", grab it, kill it - and loose the opportunity to know more about it as a part of nature. In Jewel beetles (and most other groups), as a rule you find that larvae that develop in living (or very freshly dead) plant tissues are host-specific - most frequently, on genus- or family level of plants. To know about these relations may help a lot in IDing observations, finding, and monitoring species. It is definitely a field for citizen naturalists - new discoveries for science highly probable not far away :-)
thaptor, I am blown away by your generosity in sharing your enormous expertise...many, many thanks.
It is feeding, stuff underneath is poop. If a Buprestid is observed feeding leaves, you may assume the plant also is the larval host. Your beetle strongly resembles the species Coraebus rubi - which occurs in Europe, middle East and "east palearctic zone". If this includes India? - I guess not. C. rubi, in Europe, is strictly bound on Raspberry and allies. Jasminum is unrelated, I assume your beetle is not C.rubi.
Photographed
PublishedMay 8, 2014

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