Erechthias flavistriata
species of insect
Erechthias flavistriata, the sugarcane bud moth, is a moth of the family Tineidae. It was described by Lord Walsingham in 1907 from a specimen collected in Hawaii, but it is probably an introduced species. It is found in large parts of the Pacific Rim, including New Zealand, the Cook Islands, the Marquesas, Rapa Iti, Fiji, the New Hebrides, the Kermadec Islands, the Solomons, Java and Malaya. People have spread it widely and have travelled to many islands throughout much of the Pacific.
Taxonomy
Walsingham first described this species in 1907 and initially named it Ereunetis flavistriata. Edward Meyrick placed this species in the genus Erechthias in 1915.
Description
Walsingham first described this species as follows:
Antennae yellowish white, with two small grey spots above before the apex. Palpi are yellowish white and brush-like beneath; the terminal joint is very short. Head and Thorax yellowish white. Forewings yellowish white, indistinctly streaked with broken yellow lines along the fold, along the cell, and below the costa beyond the middle; also sparsely speckled with black scales, especially beyond the middle; a short blackish streak at the upturned apex runs to the end of the apical cilia and is joined by a slender golden brown streak along the base of the shining, white costal cilia; terminal cilia whitish cinereous, with a blackish spot in their middle below the apex.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Erechthias flavistriata” is species of insect. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Erechthias, flavistriata and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “species of insect” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
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 Apr 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5385385. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1907 and 1915.
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This entry incorporates text from “Erechthias flavistriata” 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.