| | Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Coleoptera |
General appearance. Beetles luminescent from distal abdominal sternites (female Lampyris and both sexes of Phosphaenus).
Detailed morphology. The head covered by the thorax. The apical segment of the maxillary palps cylindrical to fusiform. The apical segment of the labial palps not expanded apically.
Scutellum conspicuous to absent. The fore-leg coxae attached externally, in the absence of procoxal cavities. Hind-leg coxae contiguous or narrowly separated, or widely separated.
Elytra absent (females). Wings well developed, or absent or much reduced.
Illustrations. • Lampyris noctiluca (Glow Worm): B. Ent. 698. • Lampyris noctiluca: B. Ent. 698, legend+text. • Lampyris noctiluca: B. Ent. 698, text cont.. • Lampyris noctiluca and Phosphaenus hemipterus (with Cantharidae): Fowler 4, 111 (1890). LAMPYRIDAE. 1 and 2, Lampyris noctiluca, male and female respectively; 3, Phosphaenus hemipterus. CANTHARIDAE. 4, Silis ruficollis. 5, Podabrus alpinus. 6–9 and 11–13, Cantharis spp. 6, C. abdominalis; 7, C. fuscus; 8, C. rustica; 9, C. livida; 10, C. livida var. dispar. 12, C. rufa; 13, C. figurata. 11, Telephorus lituratus Fall., = ? From Fowler's plate, with the names from the original legend (q.v.) updated. • Fowler 4, 111 (1890): original legend. • Lampyris noctiluca, male and female (Janson 190, 191).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Coleoptera. Version: 27th July 2019. delta-intkey.com’.
