Micropterix aureatella

Micropterix aureatella is a moth of the family Micropterigidae. It is found in the Palearctic ecozone (from Europe to Japan) except North Africa.[1]

Micropterix aureatella
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Arthropoda
Class:
Insecta
Order:
Lepidoptera
Family:
Micropterigidae
Genus:
Micropterix
Species:
M. aureatella
Binomial name
Micropterix aureatella
Synonyms
  • Phalaena aureatella Scopoli, 1763
  • Tinea paykullella Thunberg, 1794
  • Tinea ammanella Hübner, 1813
  • Tinea amanella

The wingspan is 9–11 millimetres (0.35–0.43 in). The base colour of the forewings is purple or bronze with two golden bands and an oval spot towards the wingtip.

The adults have working mandibles and feed on the pollen of a variety of flowers, especially those of Carex. The larvae are believed to feed on Vaccinium.

Subspecies
  • Micropterix aureatella aureatella
  • Micropterix aureatella junctella Weber, 1945
  • Micropterix aureatella shikotanica Kozlov, 1988

Taxonomy

Tinea merianella [Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775 is most probably a synonym of Micropterix aureatella, which is the only purple moth with three golden transverse fasciae within the federal territory of Vienna. The type of T. merianella was destroyed in the Hofburg fire in 1848 and it is thus hard to determine if the species is indeed a synonym.

gollark: (I'm switching to CBOR so now is a great time for backward incompatible changes)
gollark: Also, if you were to design a broadcast-based messaging system from scratch how would you do it?
gollark: Basically binary JSON.
gollark: Compact Binary Object Representation.
gollark: (Why? Because CBOR is better for everything but support and Hooman readability)

References
  1. "Micropterix aureatella (Scopoli 1763)". 2.6.2. Fauna Europaea. August 29, 2013. Retrieved November 12, 2013.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.