Adscita geryon
Species of moth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adscita geryon, the cistus forester, is a moth of the family Zygaenidae. It is found in southern and central Europe, east to Turkey. It is also present in Great Britain.[2] It was first described by the German entomologist Jacob Hübner in 1813.
| Cistus forester | |
|---|---|
| |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Zygaenidae |
| Genus: | Adscita |
| Species: | A. geryon |
| Binomial name | |
| Adscita geryon | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
The wingspan is 20–25 mm.[3][4] The larvae can be found from July to May of the following year.
Subspecies
- Adscita geryon geryon (from the Iberian Peninsula and Britain to European Russia, the Crimea and Turkey)
- Adscita geryon acutafibra Verity, 1946
- Adscita geryon orientalis (Alberti, 1938)
Specimen
Illustration- Adscita geryon mating (video, 1m 55s)
Figs. 3, 3a larvae after last moult
Etymology
Adscita from adscitus, meaning adopted or enrolled was originally a Carl Linnaeus name. Linnaeus divided the hawk-moths into four groups, three of which he called the true hawk-moths and the fourth, ″a group of seven hangers-on, in default of a better position″. In 1783 Retzius was the first to use Adscita as a genus and he kept two of these moths in the Adscita, i.e. statices and filipendulae (the six-spot burnet, which was later assigned to Zygaena). Hubner gave the moth the specific name geryon, which refers to Geryon a mythical three-headed monster killed by Heracles.[5]
