Click beetles Temporal range:
Click beetle adults and larvae (wireworms) Left: Wheat wireworm (Agriotes mancus) Right: Sand wireworm (Horistonotus uhlerii)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Coleoptera
Suborder:	Polyphaga
Infraorder:	Elateriformia
Superfamily:	Elateroidea
Family:	Elateridae Leach, 1815
Subfamilies[1]
Agrypninae Campyloxeninae Cardiophorinae Dendrometrinae Elaterinae Eudicronychinae Hemiopinae Lissominae Morostomatinae Negastriinae Oestodinae Omalisinae[2] Parablacinae Physodactylinae Pityobiinae Plastocerinae Subprotelaterinae Tetralobinae Thylacosterninae
Synonyms
Ampedidae Campylidae Cavicoxumidae Ludiidae Monocrepidiidae Pangauridae Phyllophoridae Plastoceridae Prosternidae Pyrophoridae Synaptidae

Ampedus nigricollis

Melanotus leonardi

Click beetle on a potato plant in an Oklahoma garden

Elateridae or click beetles (or "typical click beetles" to distinguish them from the related families Cerophytidae and Eucnemidae, which are also capable of clicking) are a family of beetles. Other names include elaters, snapping beetles, spring beetles or skipjacks. This family was defined by William Elford Leach (1790–1836) in 1815. They are a cosmopolitan beetle family characterized by the unusual click mechanism they possess. There are a few other families of Elateroidea in which a few members have the same mechanism, but most elaterid subfamilies can click. A spine on the prosternum can be snapped into a corresponding notch on the mesosternum, producing a violent "click" that can bounce the beetle into the air.^[3] Clicking is mainly used to avoid predation, although it is also useful when the beetle is on its back and needs to right itself. There are about 9300 known species worldwide,^[4] and 965 valid species in North America.^[5]

Etymology

Leach took the family name from the genus Elater, coined by Linnaeus in 1758. In Greek, ἐλατήρ means one who drives, pushes, or beats out.^[6] It is also the origin of the word "elastic", from the notion of beating out a ductile substance.^[7]

Description and ecology

Some click beetles are large and colorful, but most are under two centimeters long and brown or black, without markings. The adults are typically nocturnal and phytophagous, but only some are of economic importance. On hot nights they may enter houses, but are not pests there. Click beetle larvae, called wireworms, are usually saprophagous, living on dead organisms, but some species are serious agricultural pests, and others are active predators of other insect larvae. Some elaterid species are bioluminescent in both larval and adult form, such as those of the genus Pyrophorus.

Larvae are elongate, cylindrical or somewhat flattened, with hard bodies, somewhat resembling mealworms. The three pairs of legs on the thoracic segments are short and the last abdominal segment is, as is frequently the case in beetle larvae, directed downward and may serve as a terminal proleg in some species.^[8] The ninth segment, the rearmost, is pointed in larvae of Agriotes, Dalopius and Melanotus, but is bifid due to a so-called caudal notch in Selatosomus (formerly Ctenicera), Limonius, Hypnoides and Athous species.^[9] The dorsum of the ninth abdominal segment may also have sharp processes, such as in the Oestodini, including the genera Drapetes and Oestodes. Although some species complete their development in one year (e.g. Conoderus), most wireworms spend three or four years in the soil, feeding on decaying vegetation and the roots of plants, and often causing damage to agricultural crops such as potato, strawberry, corn, and wheat.^[10][11] The subterranean habits of wireworms, their ability to quickly locate food by following carbon dioxide gradients produced by plant material in the soil,^[12] and their remarkable ability to recover from illness induced by insecticide exposure (sometimes after many months),^[13] make it hard to exterminate them once they have begun to attack a crop. Wireworms can pass easily through the soil on account of their shape and their propensity for following pre-existing burrows,^[14] and can travel from plant to plant, thus injuring the roots of multiple plants within a short time. Methods for pest control include crop rotation and clearing the land of insects before sowing.

Other subterranean creatures such as the leatherjacket grub of crane flies which have no legs, and geophilid centipedes, which may have over two hundred, are sometimes confused with the six-legged wireworms.^[8]

Evolution

The oldest known species date to the Triassic, but most are problematic due to only being known from isolated elytra. Many fossil elaterids belong to the extinct subfamily Protagrypninae.^[15]

Selected genera

Notes

Lateral aspect of a typical member of the Elateridae. Just below the base of the wings the "clicking" apparatus is visible in silhouette, with the "peg" or "process" in contact with the raised slot or "cavity" into which it slips to force the impact when required.

References

• Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Click Beetle" . Encyclopedia Americana.

External links

• Media related to Elateridae at Wikimedia Commons
• Data related to Click beetle at Wikispecies
• Elateridae. Click Beetles of the Palearctic Region.

On the University of Florida / Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Featured Creatures website:

• Click beetles, Alaus spp.
• Conoderus rudis (Brown)
• Conoderus scissus Schaeffer