- This is an important tribe of beetles, including families with four malpighian tubes and only five or six abdominal sterna, while in the thorax there is a backwardly directed process of the prosternum that fits into a mesosternal cavity.
18) have the prosternal process just mentioned, capable of movement in and out of the mesosternal cavity, the beetles being thus enabled to leap into the air, hence their popular name of "click-beetles" or "skip-jacks."
The Buprestidae are distinguished from the Elateridae by the immobility of the prosternal process in the mesosternal cavity and by the absence of the lateral processes at the hind corners of the prothorax.
These nine theoretical centres or " pieces " L'Herminier deemed to be disposed in three transverse series (rangees), namely the anterior or " prosternal," the middle or " mesosternal " and the posterior or " metasternal " - each series consisting of three portions, one median piece and two side-pieces.
- Prosoma longer than wide, its sternal area very narrow, furnished with a large prosternal and metasternal plate, and often with a small mesosternal sclerite.
Sternal area broad, with prosternal, two mesosternal, and metasternal plates, the prosternum projecting forwards beneath the coxae of the 2nd pair of appendages.
Prosoma as in the Mygalomorphae, except that the mesosternal area is long and narrow.
Its ventral surface provided with one prosternal, two mesosternal and one metasternal plate.
