Adults are commonly 22–30 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Heterorrhina micans
A flower chafer that turns a black cuticle into shifting green and gold by controlling how light leaves its armour.
About this species
Heterorrhina micansGuérin-Méneville, 1830
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Heterorrhina micans is a metallic Asian flower chafer. Adults visit fruit, sap and blossoms, while the larval stage develops in decomposing plant material.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Scarabaeidae · Cetoniinae · Heterorrhina
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Mainland Southeast AsiaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Mainland Southeast Asia
Warm forest, orchards and forest margins.
Day-active flier attracted to ripe fruit, sap and flowers.
Sugary plant fluids as adults; decaying plant matter as larvae.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
The metallic sheen is not a simple green stain: stacked layers in the cuticle interfere with light, so colour intensity changes with angle while the underlying material remains dark.
The adult can fly strongly despite its heavy armoured body, opening the wing cases only slightly and extending the membranous hind wings through the side gaps while the elytra remain largely raised.
Its grub lives in rotting material and helps convert dead plant tissue into soil, then emerges as an airborne fruit-and-flower visitor with an entirely different diet and ecological role.