''Agrionympha karoo'' is a species of

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

belonging to the family

Micropterigidae Micropterigoidea is the superfamily of "mandibulate archaic moths", all placed in the single family Micropterigidae, containing currently about twenty living genera. They are considered the most primitive extant lineage of lepidoptera (Kristense ...

. It was described by George W. Gibbs and Niels P. Kristensen in 2011. It is found in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, where it is known only from the ''Eastern Cape''. It lives amongst ''

Adiantum ''Adiantum'' (), the maidenhair fern, is a genus of about 250 species of ferns in the subfamily Vittarioideae of the family Pteridaceae, though some researchers place it in its own family, Adiantaceae. The genus name comes from Greek, meaning "un ...

'' species and other ferns on rocky banks of streams where seepage maintains very limited growth of

thallose Thallus (plural: thalli), from Latinized Greek (), meaning "a green shoot" or "twig", is the vegetative tissue of some organisms in diverse groups such as algae, fungi, some liverworts, lichens, and the Myxogastria. Many of these organisms were ...

liverworts and mosses in an otherwise hot and arid environment. The length of the forewings is about 2.5 mm for males 2.6 mm for females.Agrionympha, the long-known South African jaw moths: a revision with descriptions of new species (Lepidoptera, Micropterigidae)
/ref>

Etymology

The species is named after the semi-arid region in which it occurs, the

Karoo The Karoo ( ; from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe !Orakobab or Khoemana word ''ǃ’Aukarob'' "Hardveld") is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its ext ...

References

Endemic moths of South Africa Micropterigidae Moths described in 2011 Moths of Africa {{Micropterigidae-stub