Animal coloration facilitates sexual signaling, species recognition, aposematism, camouflage, and thermoregulation. In insects, structural color has been well defined, yet most pigmentary colors and their chemical composition remain unexplored. While melanins are found in numerous taxonomic groups, other pigments are taxon-specific (e.g., aphins in aphids, papiliochromes in butterflies). The diverse Jewel Beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae; 15,000+ spp.) predominantly possess iridescent coloration achieved through multi-layer stacks of the cuticle, but a few lineages have exclusively pigmentary colors in conjunction with unique defensive compounds. This offers an ideal system in which to characterize pigment molecules, investigate cuticular morphology, and assess the role of color in an evolutionary framework. Members of the tribe Stigmoderini (Buprestinae) are equipped with buprestins, a class of toxic compounds exclusive to Buprestidae, in combination with their possibly aposematic coloration of black, brown, red, orange, and yellow. The lineage has a disjunct distribution in Australasia and Neotropics, suggesting a probable link between distinctive metabolic products and divergent evolution from Gondwana. This study aims to characterize pigment classes and types in members of Stigmoderini via solubility tests, absorbance spectrophotometry, and HPLC separation. The resultant findings will be combined with geographical and natural history data (e.g., food preference) to assess evolutionary innovations such as pigment production vs. sequestration, links with larval and adult diet, and phylogenetic patterns. These data will be disseminated to currently developing color databases such as the Insect Color Database (ICDB; insectcolor.com) and PhotochemCAD (photochemcad.com) to inform future work.