''Mnesteria sideraula'' 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 of
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 1916. 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 16–18 mm. The forewings are pale brassy yellow, in females with the dorsal half deep ochreous yellow. There is a small spot of dark bluish-leaden suffusion on the base of the costa and a dark bluish-leaden-metallic streak from the base along the fold to beyond one-third, and a similar streak in the disc from one-third to two-thirds. In males, there is a rather thick dark fuscous median longitudinal streak from the base to the apex, including the two preceding, in females less strongly marked and on the anterior half of the wing more or less obsolete. The hindwings of the males are pale ochreous tinged with grey towards the costa, with a long dense pale ochreous
hair-pencil lying along the submedian groove from the base. The female hindwings are grey.
[Meyrick, Edward (1912–1916)]
''Exotic Microlepidoptera''. 1 (18): 573.
References
Moths described in 1916
Mnesteria
{{Lecithocerinae-stub