''Mnesteria basanistis'' 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

Lecithoceridae The Lecithoceridae, or long-horned moths, are a family of small moths described by Simon Le Marchand in 1947. Although lecithocerids are found throughout the world, the great majority are found in the Indomalayan realm and the southern part of th ...

. It was described by Edward Meyrick in 1908. It is found in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. 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 14–17 mm. The forewings are orange, paler towards the costa with dark-metallic-leaden-grey markings and with a narrow basal spot, as well as a streak along the fold from near the base to near the middle. There is a streak in the disc from about one-third to two-thirds, as well as a small dorsal spot before the middle and the apical third of the wing is more or less broadly streaked with leaden grey between the veins, variable in extent. The hindwings are whitish ochreous in males, the costa suffused with grey, with a submedian groove and expansible pencil of long whitish-ochreous hairs from the base lying beneath it. The hindwings of the females are grey.''Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society''. 18 (2): 453.

References

Moths described in 1908 Mnesteria {{Lecithocerinae-stub