| | Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Coleoptera |
General appearance. Beetles luminescent from distal abdominal sternites (female Lampyris and both sexes of Phosphaenus), or not luminescent (male Lampyris).
Detailed morphology. The head covered by the thorax.
Prothorax shorter than wide. Scutellum conspicuous; anteriorly simple; posteriorly narrowly rounded or acute, or broadly rounded or obtusely angulate, or truncate, or emarginate. The fore-leg coxae countersunk in ‘procoxal cavities’, or attached externally, in the absence of procoxal cavities. The fore-leg coxal cavities in Lampyris males, open behind externally; broadly open; when present, medianly confluent; strongly transverse; without lateral extensions; internally open. The mid-leg coxal cavities markedly oblique. Hind-leg coxae contiguous or narrowly separated. Tarsal segmentation formula 5, 5, 5.
Elytra present (males); elytra individually distinctly tapered to their apices (or rounded?); (of males) covering most to all of the abdomen (Lampyris), or short, exposing several terminal abdominal tergites (Phosphaenus). Scutellary striole absent. Wings well developed. The male external genitalia trilobate.
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’.
