''Smaragdina affinis'' is a species of short-horned leaf beetles belonging to the family

Chrysomelidae The insects of the beetle family Chrysomelidae are commonly known as leaf beetles, and include over 37,000 (and probably at least 50,000) species in more than 2,500 genera, making up one of the largest and most commonly encountered of all beetle ...

, subfamily

Cryptocephalinae The Cryptocephalinae are a subfamily of the leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae), and belong to the group of case-bearing leaf beetles called the Camptosomata. The tribes Fulcidacini and Clytrini were formerly considered subfamilies of their own, and ...

Subspecies

* ''Smaragdina affinis affinis'' (Illiger, 1794) * ''Smaragdina affinis manicata'' (Lacordaire, 1848) - in SpainBiol.uni.wroc.pl
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Description

The adults are long. Head is shiny black. Elytrae are black, with bluish reflections. Pronotum is edged with orange-red or red-brown, while the disc is black. Pronotum shows a fine and sparse punctuation, with strong and dense punctuation on the elytrae. Tibia and tarsi are orange. Femurs are hardly darkened at the base.

Biology

Adults mainly feed on leaves of ''

Corylus avellana ''Corylus avellana'', the common hazel, is a species of flowering plant in the birch family Betulaceae. It is native to Europe and western Asia. It is an important component of the hedgerows that were the traditional field boundaries in lowland En ...

'', ''

Quercus An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ' ...

'' and '' Crataegus'' species, while larvae possibly feed in leaf litter.

Distribution

These leaf beetles are present in most of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

.Fauna Europaea
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Habitat

These leaf beetles are heat-loving. They can be found predominantly in thickets and forest edges, in the plane or on dry warm slopes, from about April to July.

References

External links

Beetles and beetle recording in Great Britain

Clytrina Beetles of Europe Taxa named by Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger Beetles described in 1794 {{Cryptocephalinae-stub