Friday 8 September 2017

Acleris emargana or effractana? (2)

It is a pity that Blogger won't permit photos to be added in comments!  Fingers crossed that Richard's moth proves to be a county first, but below is an image of Acleris emargana (confirmed by dissection) taken in my garden on 13th September 2015 which seems to look almost identical to Richard's specimen, even down to the shape of the costal scallop.  The two images of emargana in Sterling et al show a very strong and smooth scallop but that's perhaps a bit misleading because I regularly see examples with "weak and lumpy" scallops!  A Google image search for effractana produces quite a few pictures, some of which I would suggest might actually be emargana because, like the one below, they lack the groups of obvious raised scales which effractana is supposed to have.  The actual distribution of effractana still seems to be a work in progress...      

Acleris emargana, Westcott 13th September 2015

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks

1 comment:

  1. I trawled the internet and found lots of pictures of both species, but ended up more confused than when I started. All will be revealed in due course when Peter has had a close look.

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