''Phthorimaea sphenophora'' 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 1897. It is found in the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

, where it has been recorded from

Grenada Grenada ( ; Grenadian Creole French: ) is an island country in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. Grenada consists of the island of Grenada itself, two smaller islands, Carriacou and Pe ...

. 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 . The forewings are olive-brown, inclining to ferruginous at the base, the lighter basal patch is bounded externally by an oblique cuneiform ochreous streak, tending outwards from the costa at one-fifth from the base and reaching to the fold. A small ochreous spot lies at the end of the discal cell, and a larger, rather paler, costal spot at the commencement of the costal cilia. Around the termen are four or five ill-defined pale ochreous spots before the commencement of the olive-brown cilia. The hindwings are blue-grey.Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1897 : 73

References

Phthorimaea Moths described in 1897 {{Gnorimoschemini-stub