''Achlya flavicornis'', the yellow horned, 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

Drepanidae The Drepanidae are a family of moths with about 660 species described worldwide. They are generally divided in three subfamilies) which share the same type of hearing organ. Thyatirinae, previously often placed in their own family, bear a super ...

. 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 from Europe to the eastern

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

ecozone.

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 35–40 mm. The length of the forewings is 17–20 mm. The ground colour is greenish grey, sometimes speckled or dusted with darker grey. The reniform and orbicular marks are generally clear and distinct, but in some examples they are united and form a whitish blotch outlined in blackish; the cross lines are usually well defined, but in the dark grey dusted form are very obscure. The moth flies from February to April depending on the location. The final

instar An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or ass ...

larva is either off white all over or off white below the spiracles and darker greyish or olive green dorsally. There is a row of black spots and finely black-edged white dots. The insect overwinters as a pupa in a cocoon, amongst leaf litter. The larvae feed on

birch A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 30 ...

Subspecies

*''Achlya flavicornis flavicornis'' *''Achlya flavicornis jesoensis'' (Matsumura, 1927) (Russian Far East, north-eastern China, Korea, Japan: Hokkaido) *''Achlya flavicornis sikhotensis'' Tshistjakov, 2008 (Russian Far East)Tshistjakov, B.A., 2008 Far Eastern species of the genus ''Achlya'' Billberg, 1820 (Lepidoptera,. Drepanidae: Thyatirinae) with notes on their synonymy ''Far Eastern Entomologist''. N 180. P. 1-10
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References

External links

* Description in South. R. Moths of the British Isles
Lepidoptera of BelgiumLepiforum.deVlindernet.nl
Thyatirinae Moths described in 1758 Drepanid moths of Great Britain Moths of Asia Moths of Europe Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Thyatirinae-stub