The Elated Skip Jack

Kelly’s Field Notes

Common Name: Click Beetles, Snapping Beetles, Spring Beetles, Skipjacks, Elaters; larvae are famously known as Wireworms

Order: Coleoptera

Family: Elateridae

 Genus: There are roughly 600 genera worldwide (Bi et al. 2019), with 112 found in North America (Douglas et al. 2024).

Species: There are more than 10,000 described species of click beetle (Kundrata et al. 2021)! Nearly 1,000 of these live in the USA and Canada (Douglas et al. 2024). 200 species can emit light (Bi et al. 2019).

Notable species:

• Eastern Eyed Elater (Alaus oculatus) - it has two huge black-and-white false eyespots on its pronotum to startle predators. It can be found in deciduous woodlands across eastern and central North America (Britannica; UWM Field Station 2017).

• Headlight Elater (Pyrophorus noctilucus) - it is the brightest bioluminescent insect, glowing from two "headlights" on the pronotum plus a light organ under the abdomen. Reportedly bright enough to read by (Guiness Book of World Records 2024)! It can also control its brightness intensity, growing brighter as it feels threatened or is touched.

•  Sinopyrophorus schimmeli - discovered in Yunnan, China and described in 2019, this is the first luminous click beetle recorded from Asia. This somewhat new find supports multiple independent origins of bioluminescence within the family (Bi et al. 2019).

• Agriotes spp. (e.g., A. lineatus, A. obscurus) - these species are the classic pest wireworms of field crops in Europe and, as introductions, in North America (Douglas et al. 2024).

Description:

Click beetles are slender, elongated, and somewhat flattened beetles. They come in shades of brown or black, though some are two-toned or patterned (the eastern eyed elater, for example, is black and white sort of spotted). Most species are  2.5 to 18 mm in length (less than 0.75 in). The largest, like the Eyed Elater, are 40 mm in length (1.6 in). The pronotum of click beetles typically ends in rectangular-to-pointed hind corners that are fairly prominent. They also have short legs and serrated antennae  that can fold back into grooves when the beetle plays dead (Britannica; Kusy et al. 2021).

Their signature “gadget” is found on the underside of their thorax (a prosternal spine that fits into a notch on the mesosternum). The prothorax is loosely joined to the rest of the body, so the beetle can arch its body, latch the spine on a lip, load elastic energy into the hinge, and then release it in an explosive snap. When flipped onto its back, a click beetle uses this mechanism to hurl itself into the air with an audible CLICK, tumbling until it lands feet-down. Researchers using high-speed synchrotron X-ray video showed that soft cuticle in the hinge acts as the spring, and that the release works by snap-through buckling (the same physics as a jumping popper toy) (Bolmin et al. 2019, 2021). The jump sends a click beetle more than 20 body lengths into the air at accelerations of up to 380 times gravity (Ribak and Weihs 2011). The click is also a defense, a beetle seized by a predator snaps violently to scare its way free (Britannica).

Life Cycle:

Click beetle females lay eggs in soil, leaf litter, or decaying wood. Their larvae, called wireworms, are brownish grubs with a hard, smooth cuticle (classic grub shape and coloration). Like most other insects, click beetles are larvae for a very long time. Depending on species, the larval stage lasts anywhere from about one to five (or more!) years underground or inside rotting logs before pupation. Adults, unsurprisingly, live a few weeks to a few months (Britannica; UWM Field Station 2017).

Click beetle larvae diets are very variable. Many feed on roots, seeds, and underground stems, but a few species (especially Agriotes) are serious agricultural pests of potatoes, corn, and small grains (Douglas et al. 2024). Other larvae are scavengers in decaying wood, and some are predators. For example, the Eyed Elater larva is a two-inch hunter with  fairly large jaws for their size that hunts the larvae of wood-boring beetles and flies (UWM Field Station 2017). Adult click beetles are mostly nocturnal (day-active in cooler climates) and often come to lights at night. They feed on nectar, plant juices, and decomposing plant matter (Britannica).

Glow-in-the-Dark:

Around 200 species of click beetle are bioluminescent (that we currently know of/have been described), mostly in the tropical parts of the Americas (Agrypninae: Pyrophorini), plus a newly discovered species in Asia (Bi et al. 2019). Unlike fireflies, click beetles don’t flash, they maintain a steady glow. Some can increase the brightness over ime, getting brighter when touched by a potential predator (Guiness Book of World Records 2024). Pyrophorus species (around 26 of them, found in southern Mexico to Argentina and the West Indies) shine green from paired pronotal light organs and orange-green from a ventral abdominal organ visible in flight. Even their larvae and pupae glow (Britannica)! Historical accounts describe people using them as emergency reading and surgery lighting (Britannica)!

Super Powers:

• The Click - a latch-and-spring (latch-mediated spring actuation!) mechanism releases stored elastic energy via snap-buckling, launching the beetle over 20 body lengths into the air with no help from its legs (Bolmin et al. 2021; Ribak and Weihs 2011).

• Playing Possum (Thanatosis) - when flipped or threatened, click beetles tuck in their legs and antennae and feign death before deploying the click.

•  Living Flashlights - the fire beetle (Pyrophorus noctilucus) has a brightness of 45 millilamberts, or 143 candela per square metre (as bright as a modern single-LED torch) (Guiness Book of World Records 2024).

• Terrifying Eyespots - the Eyed Elater’s giant false eyes make a harmless woodland beetle look like something much bigger is staring back (UWM Field Station 2017).

• Extreme Patience - wireworms can spend 5+ years underground before their few months of adult glory (UWM Field Station 2017).

• Robot Muse - engineers have built insect-scale jumping robots inspired by the click beetle’s dynamic buckling mechanism (Wang et al. 2023).

References:

Bi, W.-X., He, J.-W., Chen, C.-C., Kundrata, R., & Li, X.-Y. (2019). Sinopyrophorinae, a new subfamily of Elateridae (Coleoptera, Elateroidea) with the first record of a luminous click beetle in Asia and evidence for multiple origins of bioluminescence in Elateridae. ZooKeys, 864, 79–97. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.864.26689

Bolmin, O., Socha, J. J., Alleyne, M., Dunn, A. C., Fezzaa, K., & Wissa, A. A. (2021). Nonlinear elasticity and damping govern ultrafast dynamics in click beetles. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(5), e2014569118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014569118

Bolmin, O., Wei, L., Hazel, A. M., Dunn, A. C., Wissa, A., & Alleyne, M. (2019). Latching of the click beetle (Coleoptera: Elateridae) thoracic hinge enabled by the morphology and mechanics of conformal structures. Journal of Experimental Biology, 222(12), jeb196683. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.196683

Douglas, H. B., Konstantinov, A. S., Brunke, A. J., Moseyko, A. G., Chapados, J. T., Eyres, J., Richter, R., Savard, K., Sears, E., Prathapan, K. D., Ruan, Y., & Dettman, J. R. (2024). Matrix-based key to the click beetle genera of Canada and USA with a summary of habitat use (Coleoptera, Elateridae). ZooKeys, 1198, 55–114. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1198.116950

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Click beetle. In Britannica.com. Retrieved August 14, 2026, from https://www.britannica.com/animal/click-beetle

Brightest bioluminescence. (2024). In Guinness World Records. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/100751-brightest-bioluminescence

Kundrata, R., Packova, G., Prosvirov, A. S., & Hoffmannova, J. (2021). The fossil record of Elateridae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea): Described species, current problems and future prospects. Insects, 12(4), 286. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12040286

Kusy, D., Motyka, M., Bocek, M., Masek, M., & Bocak, L. (2021). Click beetle mitogenomics with the definition of a new subfamily Hapatesinae from Australasia (Coleoptera: Elateridae). Insects, 12(1), 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12010017

Ribak, G., & Weihs, D. (2011). Jumping without using legs: The jump of the click-beetles (Elateridae) is morphologically constrained. PLoS ONE, 6(6), e20871. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020871

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station. (2017). Eyed elater click beetles (Family Elateridae). Bug of the Week. https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/eyed-elater-click-beetles-family-elateridae/

Wang, Y., Wang, Q., Liu, M., Qin, Y., Cheng, L., Bolmin, O., Alleyne, M., Wissa, A., Baughman, R. H., Vella, D., & Tawfick, S. (2023). Insect-scale jumping robots enabled by a dynamic buckling cascade. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(5), e2210651120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210651120