''Phthorimaea urosema'' 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 originally described from one adult male specimen from Peru.
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 greyish-ochreous, somewhat sprinkled irregularly with dark grey, the costa suffused with dark grey irroration and with three or four cloudy blackish-grey dots towards the base on the dorsal half. There is an oblique transverse patch of ochreous-whitish suffusion from the costa towards the base, followed on the costa by a small blackish spot and in the disc by an elongate blotch of blackish suffusion. The stigmata are blackish, surrounded by irregular ochreous-whitish suffusion, the plical obliquely before the first discal, a blotch of blackish suffusion in the middle of the disc lying between and beneath the discal stigmata. There are three small ochreous-whitish spots on the costa towards the apex, interrupting the dark grey irroration. The hindwings are slaty-grey.
[Meyrick, E. 1917: Descriptions of South American micro-Lepidoptera. ''Transactions of the Entomological Society of London'', ''65(1) 1-52.]
BHL
[See p
43
References
* Povolný, D. 1990: Gnorimoschemini of Peru and Bolivia (Lepidoptera, Gelechiidae). ''Steenstrupia'', 16: 153–223. [Not seen]
Phthorimaea
Moths described in 1917
{{Gnorimoschemini-stub