''Phymatopus californicus'', the lupine ghost moth, is a species of

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 ...

belonging to the family

Hepialidae The Hepialidae are a family of insects in the lepidopteran order. Moths of this family are often referred to as swift moths or ghost moths. Taxonomy and systematics The Hepialidae constitute by far the most diverse group of the infraorder Exopo ...

. It was described by

Jean Baptiste Boisduval Jean Baptiste Alphonse Déchauffour de Boisduval (24 June 1799 – 30 December 1879) was a French lepidopterist, botanist, and physician. He was one of the most celebrated lepidopterists of France, and was the co-founder of the Société entomol ...

in 1868 and is known from the US state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. 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 40 mm. Recorded food plants for the species include ''

Lupinus ''Lupinus'', commonly known as lupin, lupine, or regionally bluebonnet etc., is a genus of plants in the legume family Fabaceae. The genus includes over 199 species, with centers of diversity in North and South America. Smaller centers occur ...

'', ''

Baccharis ''Baccharis'' is a genus of perennials and shrubs in the aster family (Asteraceae). They are commonly known as baccharises but sometimes referred to as "brooms", because many members have small thin leaves resembling the true brooms. They are n ...

'' and ''

Eriophyllum ''Eriophyllum'', commonly known as the woolly sunflower, is a North American genus of plants in the family Asteraceae. The genus is native to western North America (USA, Canada, northwestern Mexico), with a concentration of narrow endemics in Cal ...

''. There is one generation per year. Females drop hundreds to thousands eggs while flying over patches of lupine bushes. First- and second-

instar An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or ass ...

larvae develop in the soil under lupines and feed on the exterior of the upper portions of lupine tap root. By mid-to-late spring, the larvae burrow into the plants, forming feeding galleries inside the central shoot and the upper part of the central tap root. Several larvae may be found in a single plant. Pupation occurs in the fall.

References

Hepialidae Moths described in 1868 Moths of North America Taxa named by Jean Baptiste Boisduval {{Hepialidae-stub