''Arctia aulica'', the brown tiger moth, is a

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 ...

of the family

Erebidae The Erebidae are a family of moths in the superfamily Noctuoidea. The family is among the largest families of moths by species count and contains a wide variety of well-known macromoth groups. The family includes the underwings ('' Catocala'') ...

. The species was first described by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

in his 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae''. It is found in the temperate areas of central Europe up to the area surrounding the

Amur River The Amur (russian: река́ Аму́р, ), or Heilong Jiang (, "Black Dragon River", ), is the world's List of longest rivers, tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeast China, Northeastern China (Inne ...

to the east and up to the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

and the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...

to the south. The

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

is 34–38 mm. The moth flies from May to July depending on the location. The larvae feed on various plants, including '' Achillea'', '' Hieracium'', '' Euphorbia'', '' Knautia'' and '' Taraxacum'' species. This species, along with the others of the genus ''Hyphoraia'', was moved to ''

Arctia ''Arctia'' is a genus of tiger moths in the family Erebidae. Therein, it belongs to the subtribe Arctiina in the tribe Arctiini in the subfamily Arctiinae. Species are well distributed throughout North America, Palearctic, India, and Sri Lank ...

'' as a result of phylogenetic research published by Rönkä et al. in 2016.

References

External links

Museum Stockholm

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20170322112530/http://www.faunaeur.org/full_results.php?id=446975 ''Fauna Europaea''
''Lepiforum e.V.''
Arctiina Moths described in 1758 Moths of Japan Moths of Europe Moths of Asia Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Arctiina-stub