Beautiful click beetles!

Hello everyone!

Today I will be posting pictures of two beetles I caught outside while at work in Medical Lake.

The first picture is of a western eyed click beetle, sometimes called a western eyed elater.

Kingdom: animalia
Phylum: arthropoda
Class: insecta
Order: coleoptera
Family: elateridae
Genus: alaus
Species: melanops

The second is of a western sculptured pine borer.

Kingdom: animalia
Phylum: arthropoda
Class: insecta
Order: coleoptera
Family: buprestidae
Genus: chalcophora
Species: angulicollis

These beetles have a unique body adaptation which distinguishes them from many other beetles. Between their thorax and abdomen is a unique spine and groove structure which can be popped into and out of place. This structure will snap the head and thorax of the beetle backwards and produce a distinct clicking sound. Every beetle in the family "elateridae" (that's the western eyed click beetle) has the ability to "click", but only some beetles in the closely related family buprestidae have that ability. This is why the western sculptured pine borer is also colloquially known as click beetle, despite not being a "true" elater.

The clicking behavior is a defensive one. When predators have click beetles in their grip, the clicking can surprise the predator into releasing the beetle, or it can knock the beetle loose from the predator's grip, allowing it to escape. In addition, the clicking motion is strong enough to flip the beetle into the air, if it happens to be laying on its back. This will tumble the beetle through the air and allow it to land upright again, a useful adaptation to escape danger and orient themselves correctly at the same time.

I've been catching these beetle species since I was very young, and I have always considered them very beautiful and elegant creatures. Just in case you don't have these sort of beetles where you live, I am sharing this slice of my life with you so you can appreciate the beauty too.

I'll leave you with a quote from British geneticist and evolutionary biologist J.S. Haldane, from his 1949 book 'What is Life? The Layman's View of Nature'

"The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. Beetles are actually more numerous than the species of any other insect order. That kind of thing is characteristic of nature."