''Phthorimaea molitor'' 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

Gelechiidae The Gelechiidae are a family of moths commonly referred to as twirler moths or gelechiid moths. They are the namesake family of the huge and little-studied superfamily Gelechioidea, and the family's taxonomy has been subject to considerable dis ...

. It was described by

Thomas de Grey, 6th Baron Walsingham Thomas de Grey, 6th Baron Walsingham (29 July 1843 – 3 December 1919), of Merton Hall, Norfolk, was an English politician and amateur entomologist. Biography Walsingham was the son of Thomas de Grey, 5th Baron Walsingham, and Augusta-Louisa ...

, in 1896. It is found in

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...

. 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 about 14 mm. The forewings are meal-white with some indication of a darker shade above the base of the fold, a slight greyish shade spot at the end of the cell and some very faint greyish shade spots around the termen at the base of the costal and terminal cilia, which are also meal-white. The hindwings are somewhat iridescent, greyish white.Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. 1896 : 278

References

Phthorimaea Moths described in 1896 {{Gnorimoschemini-stub