| Actenicerus | |
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| Actenicerus siaelandicus | |
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| Genus: | Actenicerus Kiesenwetter, 1858 |
Actenicerus is a genus of click beetle belonging to the family Elateridae, subfamily Dendrometrinae.
Insects in the family Elateridae are commonly called click 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 all elaterids 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. 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, and 965 valid species in North America.
Dendrometrinae is a subfamily of click beetles in the family Elateridae, containing 10 tribes worldwide.
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There are about 37 species, mostly distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. Of these, 26 are endemic to Japan. [1]
Endemism is the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation, country or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. The extreme opposite of endemism is cosmopolitan distribution. An alternative term for a species that is endemic is precinctive, which applies to species that are restricted to a defined geographical area.
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south.
