Adults are approximately 10–16 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Xiphispa coquereli
An armoured Madagascan leaf beetle that is not merely rare — it is the only species in its entire genus.
About this species
Xiphispa coquereli(Fairmaire, 1869)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Xiphispa coquereli is a distinctive Madagascan hispine leaf beetle and the sole species of Xiphispa. Its flattened, pointed and heavily sculptured body gives the genus a form with no second living species for comparison.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Chrysomelidae · Xiphispa
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
MadagascarBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Madagascar
Forest vegetation and foliage; the host plant remains undocumented.
Adults move over leaves and stems.
Plant tissue; the exact host remains unknown.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
Xiphispa is monotypic: this one species carries the entire genus, so extinction of X. coquereli would remove not just a species but a complete named branch of leaf-beetle diversity.
The head projects into a pointed shield and the flattened wing cases are covered in ridges and pits, creating armour that resembles a machined object rather than the rounded shell of an ordinary leaf beetle.
After more than 150 years of scientific recognition, no host plant has been documented — an extraordinary gap for a leaf beetle and evidence of how little field biology is known for Madagascar’s small endemic insects.