Sthenopis pretiosus
species of insect
Sthenopis pretiosus, the gold-spotted ghost moth, is a species of moth of the family Hepialidae. It was first described by Gottlieb August Wilhelm Herrich-Schäffer in 1856. It can be found in found Brazil, Venezuela and in the eastern United States and south-eastern Canada.
Naming history
Sthenopis pretiosus was independently discovered, named and described at least three times:
It was first found in Brazil and described by Gottlieb August Wilhelm Herrich-Schäffer in 1856 who called it Epialus pretiosus. The type specimen of E. pretiosus has not been located.
It was also found in the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada and described by Augustus Radcliffe Grote in 1878, who called it Hepialus auratus which become Sthenopis auratus.
It was also found in Venezuela and described by Rudolf Pfitzner in 1906, who called it Phassus eldorado. Later Pfitzner published an illustration of Phassus eldorado. The holotype of P. eldorado is at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main.
In 2015, Carlos G. C. Mielke and John R. Grehan concluded that Hepialus auratus Grote, 1878 and Phassus eldorado Pfitzner, 1906 are junior and subjective synonymies of Sthenopis pretiosus Herrich-Schäffer, [1856], and applied the rule of priority to change the names of H. auratus and P. eldorado to Sthenopis pretiosus.
The public source identifies “Sthenopis pretiosus” as species of insect. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sthenopis, pretiosus and species.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Sthenopis pretiosus”, the useful work is to connect “species of insect” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 21, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7616104. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1856, 1878, 1906 and 2015.
A general summary may omit uncertainty, sample limits or methodological disagreement that is explicit in the technical record. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sthenopis pretiosus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.