Southern and central Europe, the Mediterranean region, the Balkans, Anatolia and parts of western Asia.
Fine-art photographic collection
Anthaxia nitidula
A tiny jewel beetle in which males and females wear completely different metallic colour schemes.
About this species
Anthaxia nitidula(Linnaeus, 1758)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Anthaxia nitidula is a small sun-loving jewel beetle associated with flowering shrubs and trees in the rose family. The sexes are strikingly different in colour, while the larvae develop unseen beneath bark.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Buprestidae · Anthaxia
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
Southern Europe to western AsiaBroad documented range and selected occurrence localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Woody vegetation within the documented range; buprestid larvae typically develop in stems, trunks or roots.
Adults are generally seasonal and often most active in warm sunny conditions.
Larvae of jewel beetles develop in plant tissue; exact hosts for this species require specialist sources.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
Males are predominantly metallic green, whereas females combine a red or copper head and pronotum with green wing cases — an unusually vivid sexual colour difference.
Adults bask and feed on flowers, but the flattened larva grows beneath the bark of hosts such as Prunus, Crataegus and Amygdalus.
The intricate surface sculpture scatters light into a granular sparkle, allowing a beetle only a few millimetres long to look gem-like at close range.