Snout butterflies
| Snout butterflies | ||||||||||
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Libytheana carinenta |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Libytheinae | ||||||||||
| Boisduval , 1840 |
The Schnauzenfalter (Libytheinae) are a small subfamily of the noble butterfly family with only two genera . The inconspicuous, mostly brown moths are medium-sized and with only about a dozen species occur on all continents except for Antarctica .
In Florissant, Colorado , 35 million year old moth fossils have been found.
description
A special feature of the Libytheinae are long, scaled buttons that are four times as long as the head and look like a snout. The moths can also be recognized by their typical wing shape with the noticeably jagged outer edge of the forewings. The females have six legs, in contrast to the males, who have the cleaning paws typical of noble butterflies and can only use four legs for locomotion. Libythea geoffroy shows a sexual dimorphism .
Way of life
The moths fly quickly and jerkily and are often dormant. The males in particular suckle in groups in damp places. The females live more hidden.
The caterpillars feed on hackberry trees ( Celtis ), some also on soap trees ( Sapindaceae), laurel plants (Lauraceae) and honeysuckle plants (Caprifoliaceae).
species
In Europe only the hackberry butterfly ( Libythea celtis ) occurs. Its distribution area stretches from North Africa through the Mediterranean region (northwards to the southern Alpine valleys ) and over southern Russia to India. The females lay their eggs one by one on the buds of the European hackberry tree ( Celtis australis ) in spring . The species overwinters as a moth.
The African Libythea labdaca and the American Libytheana carinenta are migrant butterflies . Libythea labdaca migrates south in spring and north in autumn in large flocks. During a migration in Ghana , the number of moths was estimated at one billion.
Species:
- Genus Libythea
- Libythea collenettei , Poulton & Riley 1928 occurs on the Marquesas islands of Nuku Hiva and Ua Pou in French Polynesia.
- Libythea geoffroy , Godart 1822, distributed in Burma , Cambodia , Laos and parts of Indonesia and Thailand , New Guinea , the Solomon Islands , New Caledonia , Lord Howe Island and northern Australia . The caterpillars feed on various hackberry tree species.
- Libythea narina , Godart 1819, from Burma, Thailand, via Vietnam , the Philippines to Indonesia.
- Libythea myrrha , Godart 1819, from India via Malaysia , Brunei , Indonesia to the Philippines. The caterpillars feed on Celtis tetrandra .
- Libythea celtis , Laicharting 1782 occurs from North Africa through southern Europe and southern Russia to India.
- Libythea lepita , Moore 1857, distributed from India and Pakistan to China , Korea and Japan . It was sometimes considered a subspecies of L. celtis ; Research from 2006 confirmed the classification as a species. The behavior is similar to that of L. celtis , the caterpillars also eat Trema .
- Libythea laius , Trimen 1879 lives in East Africa, Madagascar , South India and Sri Lanka .
- Libythea labdaca , Westwood 1851, West and Central Sub-Saharan Africa .
- Libythea cinyras , Trimen 1866, is only known from a singlespecimen caughtin Mauritius . It is unclear whether the species became extinct.
- Genus Libytheana
- Libytheana carinenta , Cramer 1777, North, Central and South America
- Libytheana fulvescens , Lathy 1904, Dominica ( Lesser Antilles )
- Libytheana motya , Huebner 1823, Cuba ( Greater Antilles )
- Libytheana terena , Godart 1819, Hispaniola , Jamaica , Puerto Rico ( Greater Antilles )
swell
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Malcolm J. Scoble: The Lepidoptera: Form, Function and Diversity. Oxford University Press 1995, ISBN 978-0-19-854952-9
- ↑ Thomas C. Emmed: Wonderful and mysterious world of butterflies , Bertelsmann Lexicon-Verlag, Gütersloh 1976, ISBN 3-570-00893-2
- ↑ Tom Tolman, Richard Lewington: The butterflies of Europe and Northwest Africa , Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-440-07573-7
- ^ Libythea celtis (Laicharting 1782). Fauna Europaea, Version 1.3, April 19, 2007 , accessed October 8, 2007 .
- ^ Tree of Life: Libytheinae
