Castiarina bella (Castiarina bella)

Castiarina bella Feeding on pollen from a Leptospermum ( tea tree) Australia,Castiarina bella,Eamw beetles,Geotagged,Summer,eamw jewel beetles

Appearance

About 18mm long, narrow, head and thorax dark bronze coloured,
Elytra with lines of heavy pitting, 3 sections blueish black (base, centre, tips) 2 broad bands one cream and continuous and one cream overrun with red and incomplete at the middle.

Castiarina bella This small leaf beetle is found in spring time on flowering tea tree.
It is surprisingly bright and attractive, certainly deserving of its name, bella.
This form with additional yellow dots on the base of the elytra is a very uncommon variety. Australia,Castiarina,Castiarina bella,Geotagged,buprestidae

Distribution

Mostly eastern Australian coast to low hills although a few specimens have been found well inland.

Jewel beetle (Castiarina bella) One of the larger ti-tree jewel beetles at about 18mm long.
This one was wandering between heavily laden inflorescences.
Feeding on Leptospermum scoparium.
In a local national park (Churchill NP) Australia,Buprestidae,Castiarina,Castiarina bella,Geotagged,Jewel beetle,Spring

Status

Not at risk

Behavior

Seasonal. Life cycle around flowering Leptospermum sp.

Habitat

Leptospermum in large patches with full sun.

Food

Flower nectar.

Cultural

About a century ago these beetles were captured and tethered live to clothing for people's entertainment.
This is how they got their common name.

References:

Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.

http://bie.ala.org.au/species/Castiarina+bella
http://eol.org/pages/3221422/overview

Taxonomy
Kingdom	Animalia
Division	Arthropoda
Class	Insecta
Order	Coleoptera
Family	Buprestidae
Genus	Castiarina
Species	Castiarina bella

Photographed in
Australia