''Minucia lunaris'', the lunar double-stripe or brown underwing, is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

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 ...

in 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

Michael Denis Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Michael Denis, also: ''Sined the Bard'', (27 September 1729 – 29 September 1800) was an Austrian Catholic priest and Jesuit, who is best known as a poet, bibliographer, and lepidopterist. Life Denis was born at Schärding ...

and

Ignaz Schiffermüller Ignaz Schiffermüller (born 2 October 1727 in Hellmonsödt; died 21 June 1806 in Linz) was an Austrian naturalist mainly interested in Lepidoptera. Schiffermüller was a teacher at the Theresianum College in Vienna. His collection was presented ...

in 1775 and is found in Asia, Europe and North Africa.

Technical description and variation

''Minucia lunaris'' Schiff (= ''augur'' Esp.) Forewing pale ash grey, faintly dusted with dark, with a slight ochreous tinge, always darker in the female, tinged with pale red brown; inner and outer lines yellowish, the inner nearly straight, slightly bent inwards on subcostal vein and vein 1; the outer sinuous, approaching inner line on inner margin; orbicular a brown dot; reniform a brownish lunule; both lines followed by a brownish shade, the inner below middle only, the outer throughout; subterminal line twice indented, with a large rounded projection above each indentation; terminal area darker; a row of black terminal dots; hindwing pale brownish, with a faint curved pale median line before a fuscous brown submarginal border; this species varies in coloration; the ab. ''rufa'' Oberth. is red brown with thee markings more or less obsolete; ab ''murina'' Oberth. is mouse colour throughout, and ''maura'' Oberth. is blackish fuscous; — in ab. olivescens ab. nov., from Cintra, Portugal, the whole wing is tinged with greenish, and the abdomen is glossy; subsp. inconspicua nov. from Lambessa, N.Africa, is a smaller form, generally with slight and inconspicuous markings, dull grey in the male and somewhat pink-tinged in the female. Larva brown; dorsal line line, moniliform; subdorsal broad, dark, enclosing pale spots, with three line dark lines beneath it; spiracular pale, sometimes yellowish; two lateral projections on segment 5; pairs of dorsal points on last two segments; head brown. 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 53–61 mm.

Biology

The adults fly from May to June depending on the location. The larvae feed nocturnally on the tender shoots of

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

(''Quercus'' species) in July and August. It overwinters as a

pupa A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their ...

in a tough cocoon of coarsely spun silk, dead leaves and soil.

Distribution

The lunar double-stripe is found in

Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

and

Southern Europe Southern Europe is the southern regions of Europe, region of Europe. It is also known as Mediterranean Europe, as its geography is essentially marked by the Mediterranean Sea. Definitions of Southern Europe include some or all of these countrie ...

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 ...

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 ...

and

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

. In Great Britain it is a scarce migrant. Frequent records from

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

in the 1870s suggest it was once resident there and from 1947 moths,

ova , abbreviated as OVA and sometimes as OAV (original animation video), are Japanese animated films and series made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theaters, though the first part of an OVA s ...

and larvae were regularly found in Orlestone Wood,

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

amongst oak

coppice Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeated ...

. Numbers declined from 1953 and the last record was in 1958; temporary residence is attributed to wartime coppicing and the consequent abundance of oak stools and fresh foliage.

References

External links

''Moths and Butterflies of Europe and North Africa''
*
''Lepiforum e.V.''
{{Taxonbar, from=Q901271 Ophiusini Moths of Africa Moths of Asia Moths of Europe Moths described in 1775 Taxa named by Michael Denis Taxa named by Ignaz Schiffermüller