| Paraplatyptilia albidorsellus | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Clade: | Euarthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Pterophoridae |
| Genus: | Paraplatyptilia |
| Species: | P. albidorsellus |
| Binomial name | |
| Paraplatyptilia albidorsellus (Walsingham, 1880) [1] | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Paraplatyptilia albidorsellus is a moth of the family Pterophoridae. It is found in North America (including California, Alberta and British Columbia).
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 Pterophoridae or plume moths are a family of Lepidoptera with unusually modified wings. Though they belong to the Apoditrysia like the larger moths and the butterflies, unlike these they are tiny and were formerly included among the assemblage called "microlepidoptera".
North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere; it is also considered by some to be a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea.
The wingspan is about 30 millimetres (1.2 in). The head and thorax are white, with a few scattered fuscous scales. The legs are whitish tinged with cinereous and the feet and spurs are paler. The forewings are white, thickly sprinkled with brown, forming a widening streak from the base of the wing to the triangular patch, beyond which it is paler and crossed by a white costal patch and a white line near the outer margin and parallel to it. The fringes are ashy, with a brown line at the base. The hindwings are white, thickly dusted with brown. The fringes are paler brown and much paler at the base. [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).
