Mainland and island Southeast Asia, including parts of Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and neighbouring countries.
Fine-art photographic collection
Anoplophora elegans
A longhorn beetle whose antennae extend far beyond a body already built like a drill.
About this species
Anoplophora elegans(Gahan, 1888)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Anoplophora elegans is a large Southeast Asian longhorn beetle with a cylindrical wood-boring form and exceptionally long banded antennae. The adult's markings disguise a larval stage spent hidden inside woody tissue.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Cerambycidae · Anoplophora
Accepted species or infraspecific taxon in the current GBIF/Catalogue of Life treatment; unsupported details have been omitted rather than inferred. · checked 2026-07-15
Southeast AsiaBroad documented range and selected occurrence localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Woodland or woody vegetation within the documented range; larval habitat depends on the host plant.
Adults are seasonal; timing varies with climate and locality.
Longhorn beetle larvae develop in woody plant tissue; the exact host range for this species should be taken from specialist literature.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
In males the antennae can reach roughly one and a half times the body length, sweeping through the air as an enormous chemical and tactile sensor.
The pale patches are made from dense microscopic hairs rather than pigment in the shell, so abrasion can gradually erase the pattern from an old beetle.
Females cut into bark to place eggs, and the emerging larva begins life protected inside living or recently stressed wood where most of its growth is invisible.
More photographs
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