''Lithophane semibrunnea'', the tawny pinion, 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

Noctuoidea Noctuoidea is the superfamily of noctuid (Latin "night owl") or "owlet" moths, and has more than 70,000 described species, the largest number of for any Lepidopteran superfamily. Its classification has not yet reached a satisfactory or stable st ...

family. It is found in scattered populations in

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

, central and southern Europe and

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

Technical description and variation

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 o ...

is 40–44 mm. Forewing dull wood brown, the inner-marginal half suffused with black brown, blackest on inner margin and in outer half of submedian interspace; veins marked with black scales; lines indistinct; the outer marked by pairs of black dots on veins and a white crescent on submedian fold; the submarginal line by a slighter one; hindwing greyish brown, paler in male, with the terminal area darker.Seitz, A. Ed., 1914 ''Die Großschmetterlinge der Erde'', Verlag Alfred Kernen, Stuttgart Band 3: Abt. 1, Die Großschmetterlinge des palaearktischen Faunengebietes, Die palaearktischen eulenartigen Nachtfalter, 1914

Biology

The moth flies in late autumn. Larva green; dorsal and subdorsal lines white; spiracular line broad, yellowish white, much varied with white dots and streaks below; head greenish; feeding on ash and other trees. The larvae mainly feed on ''

Fraxinus excelsior ''Fraxinus excelsior'', known as the ash, or European ash or common ash to distinguish it from other types of ash, is a flowering plant species in the olive family Oleaceae. It is native throughout mainland Europe east to the Caucasus and Albor ...

''.

References

External links

Tawny pinion at UKmothsFauna EuropaeaLepiforum.deVlindernet.nl
semibrunnea Moths of Europe Moths of Asia Moths of the Middle East Moths described in 1809 Taxa named by Adrian Hardy Haworth {{Cuculliinae-stub