Scythropia crataegella
species of insect
Scythropia crataegella, the hawthorn moth, is a species of moth in the monotypic genus Scythropia. It is found in western Eurasia.
Taxonomy
Described as Phalaena crataegella by Linnaeus in 1767, it was made the type species of Scythropia by Jacob Hübner in the 1820s. The genus is now placed in the monotypic family Scythropiidae., but was previously placed in subfamily Scythropiinae either in Plutellidae or Yponomeutidae.
Initially (in 1796), Hübner had misidentified the grass moth Eudonia lacustrata – much larger and only distantly related, but somewhat similar in color and pattern – as Linnaeus' Phalaena crataegella. Similarly, a junior synonym of this species, Tinea cornella, has frequently been misapplied – and sometimes still is even today – to the fairly closely related apple blossom tineid.
Description and ecology
Scythropia crataegella is a small moth is widespread almost all over Europe; it is absent from Great Britain north of The Lake District, and has also not been recorded yet on Iceland and Ireland (where it is probably genuinely absent), in Portugal (where it may be absent), and in Slovenia (where it probably occurs but has not been found yet, as its range includes the surrounding countries). It is quite common throughout its range. The nocturnal adults are attracted to light sources; on Great Britain they are only commonly seen in July, but elsewhere they may be found from late May to September and have two generations per year.
The wingspan of adults is 11–15 mm.
“Scythropia crataegella” enters the record as species of insect. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Scythropia, crataegella and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scythropia crataegella” 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.