''Mnesteria pharetrata'' 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 1905. 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 20–21 mm. The forewings are orange, lighter and more ochreous tinged towards the costa and with shining silvery-bronze markings. There is a spot on the base of the costa and a line along the submedian fold from rather near the base to beyond the middle of the wing, as well as a longitudinal discal line from beyond one-third to three-fifths, dilated at the extremities, and a longitudinal spot above its posterior extremity. There are six streaks on the veins starting from beyond three-fifths, and running to the posterior part of the costa and termen. The hindwings are light yellowish fuscous in males and grey in females.''Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society''. 16 (4): 593.

References

Moths described in 1905 Mnesteria {{Lecithocerinae-stub