''Mnesictena adversa'' 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 ...

in the family Crambidae. It was described by

Alfred Philpott Alfred Philpott (15 December 1870 – 24 July 1930) was a New Zealand museum curator, entomologist and writer. He was born in Tysoe, Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The ...

in 1917 and is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

Taxonomy

This species was first described by Alfred Philpott in 1917 and named ''Mecyna adversa''. In 1988 J. S. Dugdale discussed this species under the name ''Mnesictena adversa''. In 2010 the publication The New Zealand Inventory of Biodiversity placed this species in the genus ''Udea'' and this placement has been followed by many New Zealand natural history institutions and collections. However this placement has been brought into doubt by the work of Richard Mally and Matthias Nuss.

Description

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 20–21 mm for males and females. The forewings are ferruginous, but brighter along the costa. There is an irregular transverse outwardly-oblique white discal dot at the middle and a dark, obscurely indicated second line. The hindwings are yellow with the discal dot and terminal band fuscous.

References

adversa Moths of New Zealand Moths described in 1917 Endemic fauna of New Zealand Taxa named by Alfred Philpott Endemic moths of New Zealand {{Spilomelinae-stub