| Gonaepa actinis | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Gelechiidae |
| Genus: | Gonaepa |
| Species: | G. actinis |
| Binomial name | |
| Gonaepa actinis Walsingham, 1915 | |
Gonaepa actinis is a moth in the Gelechiidae family. It was described by Walsingham in 1915. It is found in New Guinea. [1]
Moths comprise a group of insects related to butterflies, belonging to the order Lepidoptera. Most lepidopterans are moths, and there are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of which have yet to be described. Most species of moth are nocturnal, but there are also crepuscular and diurnal species.
The Gelechiidae are a family of moths commonly referred to as twirler moths or gelechiid moths. They are the namesake family of the huge and little-studied superfamily Gelechioidea, and the family's taxonomy has been subject to considerable dispute. These are generally very small moths with narrow, fringed wings. The larvae of most species feed internally on various parts of their host plants, sometimes causing galls. Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga) is a host plant common to many species of the family, particularly of the genus Chionodes, which as a result is more diverse in North America than usual for Gelechioidea.
New Guinea is a large island separated by a shallow sea from the rest of the Australian continent. It is the world's second-largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 785,753 km2 (303,381 sq mi), and the largest wholly or partly within the Southern Hemisphere and Oceania.
The wingspan is 15–17 mm. The forewings are dark purplish fuscous at the base, along the costa, and at the apex and termen. From the dorsum at about one-third arises a bright orange-yellow band, reaching to two-thirds and tending obliquely outward to the commencement of the costal cilia. This band is much broken-up by narrow lines of the dark ground-colour, marking the direction of the veins and terminating in a dentate transverse fascia of the same colour, beyond which an equally dentate line of orange-yellow separates it from the terminal and apical area. A slender pale yellow marginal line precedes the richly purple cilia, which are faintly tipped with pale yellowish. The hindwings are bright orange-yellow, the same dentate bands passing across them before the dark purplish fuscous terminal area, but even more accentuated than in the forewings, with the same slender yellowish line at their base, a narrower deeper purple band, which is also visible in the forewings, clearly indicated throughout. [2]
The wingspan 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 60.93 metres, and a wandering albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of 3.63 metres, the official record for a living bird. The term wingspan, more technically extent, is also used for other winged animals such as pterosaurs, bats, insects, etc., and other fixed-wing aircraft such as ornithopters. In humans, the term wingspan also refers to the arm span, which is distance between the length from one end of an individual's arms to the other when raised parallel to the ground at shoulder height at a 90º angle. Former professional basketball player Manute Bol stands at 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m) and owns one of the largest wingspans at 8 ft 6 in (2.59 m).
