Beautiful bronze

The beetle is 23-30 mm long, dull, with a fat luster, golden green, sometimes bright red. Lower side of body, pronotum sides and elytra, legs blue. Elytra evenly convex, behind the middle near the suture without a longitudinal depression. Body without white spots, with weak punctures. The anterior process of the mesothorax is wide, smooth, in scattered points.

Described from the Georgievsk region in the Stavropol Territory . Distributed in Asia Minor and Western Asia, northern Iraq and northern Iran , Georgia , Armenia , Azerbaijan , south-western Turkmenistan , Ukraine ( Crimea ).

In Russia, it is found in the Caucasus ; the northern boundary of the range runs from the Kuban delta to the stanitsa of Ilskaya, Krasnodar , and Pyatigorsk ; In the south of this band is found throughout the Caucasus .

He lives in deciduous forests, on the plains, in the mountains at great heights does not rise. The beetles fly from May to October, the peak is in June-August. Most of the time is spent on trees with flowing juice. The larvae develop in the rotten wood of deciduous trees, mainly oak and willow. The development cycle is 3-4 years old.

Quantitative accounting was not conducted. Indirect data suggest that the number is reduced.

Limiting factors

Reduction of indigenous forests. Forestry activities, accompanied by the removal of old and hollow trees.

Listed in the Red Book of Russia (Category II, a shrinking species)

Preservation of old-growth trees, especially oak, creation in habitats of species of small specially protected natural territories, restriction of cutting down of old deciduous forests in the Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories.

• Bronzovka Protaetia (Cetonischema) speciosa (Ad.) (Scarabaeidae) - photo by M. E. Smirnova
• Bronzovka Protaetia (Cetonischema) speciosa (Adams, 1817) (photo by A. S. Vlasenko)
• Bronzovka Protaetia (Cetonischema) speciosa in the Red Book of Krasnodar Territory