''Stephensia brunnichella'' 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 ...

of the family

Elachistidae The Elachistidae (grass-miner moths) are a family of small moths in the superfamily Gelechioidea. Some authors lump about 3,300 species in eight subfamilies here, but this arrangement almost certainly results in a massively paraphyletic and comp ...

found in Europe and east into the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sib ...

Description

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 o ...

is 8–9 mm. The head is dark bronzy. Antennae with white subapical band. Forewings are dark bronzyfuscous; a subbasal fascia, another before middle, an erect tornal spot, and a costal spot before apex pale golden-metallic. Hindwings are dark grey. The larva is green-whitish; dorsal line dark green; head and plate of 2 blackish.

Biology

The larvae feed on lesser calamint ('' Calamintha nepeta''), wild basil ('' Clinopodium vulgare'') and '' Satureja calamintha''

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

the leaves of their host plant. The mine starts as a long, narrow, full depth gallery running toward the leaf tip and the

frass Frass refers loosely to the more or less solid excreta of insects, and to certain other related matter. Definition and etymology ''Frass'' is an informal term and accordingly it is variously used and variously defined. It is derived from the ...

is found in a narrow central line. After reaching the leaf tip, the mine becomes a large, full depth, brown blotch. Here, the frass is deposited in black lumps and the larvae may vacate the mine and start elsewhere. Larvae of the first generation hibernate in the mine. Pupation takes place outside of the mine, in a white spinning, mostly between the leaves of the host plant. The larvae have a greenish body with a black head. They can be found from autumn to April and again in July.

Distribution

It is widespread throughout Europe. In the north, the distribution extends up to southern

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

and

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...

and in the east it ranges as far as

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

and the

Crimea Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a p ...

.Stephensia Brunnichella (Lepidoptera: Elachistidae) New Species For Lithuania
/ref>

References

External links

lepiforum.de
Elachistidae Leaf miners Moths described in 1767 Moths of Asia Moths of Europe Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Elachistidae-stub