Blood-vein

Blood-vein
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Geometridae
Genus: Timandra
Species: T. comae
Binomial name
Timandra comae
(Schmidt, 1931)

The blood-vein, (Timandra comae) is a moth of the family Geometridae. It has a scattered distribution in western and central Europe north of the Alps. In the British Isles the distribution is patchy outside southern England and Wales. In far eastern Europe east of a line running roughly from Finland through Estonia , it is replaced by its sister species Timandra griseata. The species were split in 1931, only to be subsequently re-merged by most authors. But since 1994, new research has come out in favour of treating them as distinct species.[1]

The wings are cream coloured with bold red or purple fascia forming a diagonal stripe across forewings and hindwings. All wings are fringed with the same colour. The tornus of the hindwing is sharply angled giving a distinctive shape. The wingspan is 30–35 mm. Two broods are produced each year with the adults flying in May and June and again in August and September . It flies at night and is attracted to light.

The larva is grey brown with darker spots on the back. In the UK, it feeds on the leaves of a variety of plants including dock, knotgrass, sorrel and various species of Atriplex. It overwinters as a larva.

  1. ^ The flight season refers to the British Isles. This varies in other parts of the range.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Blood-vein.

Bibliography

References

  1. Õunap et al' (2005)


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/20/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.