Ptocheuusa paupella

Ptocheuusa paupella, the light fleabane neb, is a moth of the family Gelechiidae. It is found from central and southern Europe to the Ural Mountains. It is also found in Turkey and India.[2]

Ptocheuusa paupella
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Gelechiidae
Genus:	Ptocheuusa
Species:	P. paupella
Binomial name
Ptocheuusa paupella (Zeller, 1847)[1]
Synonyms
Gelechia paupella Zeller, 1847 Aphelosetia inulella Curtis, 1850 Apatetris leucoglypta Meyrick, 1918

The wingspan is 10–12 mm. The ground colour is buff, streaked with whitish and with darker speckling.The forewings are light ochreous-yellow,with some black scales mostly arranged in longitudinal rows ; margins, a median longitudinal streak from base to middle, an indistinct inwardly oblique slender fascia before middle and another at 3/4, and sometimes two or three faint longitudinal lines in disc posteriorly white. Hindwings are pale grey.The larva is pale yellowish ; head and two spots on 2 dark fuscous, head pale brown.[3]

Adults are on wing in June and again from August to September.[4]

The larvae feed in the seedheads of Pulicaria dysenterica, Centaurea nigra and Inula crithmoides.[5]

References

1. Fauna Europaea
2. Junnilainen, J. et al. 2010: The gelechiid fauna of the southern Ural Mountains, part II: list of recorded species with taxonomic notes (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae). Zootaxa, 2367: 1–68. Preview
3. Meyrick, E., 1895 A Handbook of British Lepidoptera MacMillan, London pdf This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Keys and description
4. UKmoths
5. microlepidoptera.nl Archived 2013-10-05 at the Wayback Machine