Little moth moth
| Little moth moth | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Heterogynis penella | ||||||||||||
| ( Huebner , 1819) |
The little moth moth ( Heterogynis penella ) is a butterfly from the spring ram family (Heterogynidae).
features
The moths reach a wingspan of 24 to 27 millimeters. The male is completely brown-black in color. Their wings have a fringed edge on the outer edge, their antennae are heavily combed. They are very similar to rams (Zygaenidae). The females have a very unusual appearance for butterflies. They are about 10 to 15 millimeters long, have no wings or antennae and only very small stumpy legs. They look like maggots or their caterpillars and can only move around by crawling. Their body is yellow in color and has several black longitudinal bands interspersed with yellow. Your head is brown.
The caterpillars reach a body length of 10 millimeters (males) or 15 to 20 millimeters (females) and are colored similar to the adult female: They are yellow and have several black longitudinal bands interspersed with yellow. They have scattered yellow hairs that are strongly curved.
Occurrence
The animals are particularly common in the Mediterranean region and the southern Alps . In Central Europe they are only known from Alsace , in Germany they are lost. They live on very warm and dry meadows with steppe-like vegetation.
Way of life
Flight and caterpillar times
The animals fly or live in June in one generation per year.
Food of the caterpillars
The caterpillars feed particularly on hairy gorse ( Genista pilosa ), but probably also on other butterflies , as they can also be fed on common horn clover ( Lotus corniculatus ) during rearing .
development
The behavior and development of the two sexes is very different. The male caterpillars, which are only about half the size of the females, spin a whitish cocoon early on . The doll it contains is black and has clearly recognizable antennae and wing sheaths. The pupae of the females, however, are yellow with gray stripes at the front and light brown at the back. They have no body appendages and are barrel-shaped. You can see their cocoons high up on the vegetation from afar. The male moths hatch after about two weeks, but this happens at the same time as the females, as they only need five days for their development. This is because their shape does not change that much.
The female slips out of its cocoon and hooks onto the outside of the cocoon with its stubby feet. Depending on whether the exit opening on the web was above or below, the animal now points with its head in the corresponding direction. In this position, it sends out attractants to attract males. If this fails, it crawls back into the cocoon in the afternoon to advertise again the next day. This is repeated a few times, but if no male is found, the female lays unfertilized eggs into the cocoon and dies. The eggs cannot develop, but this is possible with other feathered rams. If the female is successful, however, mating takes place on the outside of the cocoon for about five minutes. Then the female crawls not only into the cocoon, but also back into the pupa shell and lays her eggs. Both the male and the female die shortly after these processes.
The caterpillars hatching from the eggs first eat the remains of the mother, then they climb onto their forage plants and eat their leaves. They do not develop very far in the first year and prepare early for wintering. To do this, they spin lenticular cocoons between grasses. The caterpillars react in a similar way to those of the rams when they come into contact with the secretion of a colorless liquid, which they can absorb again after a while. It is assumed that this liquid, like the rams, contains hydrogen cyanide and is very poisonous.
Hazard and protection
- Red list FRG: 0 (lost or extinct)
swell
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Heiko Bellmann : The new Kosmos butterfly guide, butterflies, caterpillars and forage plants . Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-440-09330-1 .
- ^ Heterogynis penella. Butterflies-Deutschlands.de, Christian Tolasch, accessed on October 19, 2006 .
literature
- Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (Ed.): Red List of Endangered Animals in Germany . Landwirtschaftsverlag, Münster 1998, ISBN 3-89624-110-9 .