Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
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Photo#421188
Crambid - Cacotherapia interalbicalis

Crambid - Cacotherapia interalbicalis
Miller Canyon, Huachuca Mountains, Cochise County, Arizona, USA
July 3, 2010
Size: Forewing Length 9 mm
Elevation 5,000. ft.
Oak-Juniper Woodland.

Images of this individual: tag all
Crambid - Cacotherapia interalbicalis Crambid - Cacotherapia interalbicalis

Moved to Cacotherapia interalbicalis
Moved from Cacotherapiini.

Tentative ID. See comments below. Correction welcome.

Moved to Cacotherapiini
Moved from Galleriinae.

Decaturia, Alpheias, and Cacotherapia are in Cacotherapiini.

 
Thanks, Steve
Scholtens & Solis didn't include tribes in their checklist, which must be why I missed this.

 
Cacotherapia interalbicalis
Yep, and I forget to tag all. Thanks for grabbing the other one. As you probably know, they didn't include the tribes because it is now recognized that many are incorrectly formed and this may be one of them.

BOLD sample ID: CCDB-28959-B10, identified as Cacotherapia interalbicalis, is a good match for this. This also matches the female in Barnes & McDunnough (1912), pl. 3, fig. 12. The species appears to be sexually dimorphic with females larger and more pale. The descriptions seems to apply more to the males so identification is complicated.

Moved
Moved from Pyralid Moths.

Moved

Moved
Moved from Pyraloidea.

 
5650 – Decaturia pectinalis?
Thanks for the wake up call on this one. I placed this in superfamily because I wasn't sure and meant to circle back at some point.

Although this looks like a crambid, there are similar pyralid examples in the subfamily Galleriinae. Charles has a similarly patterned example from the same location here under Decaturia pectinalis. It and the other examples in the Guide, BOLD, and MPG are males and I assume that this would be a female if my hunch is correct.

So I just pulled up the original description here, which I will add the to the Info page, and although males have short labial palpi and pectinate antennae, females in this genus have long rostriform palpi and simple antennae. Females of this species are also larger.

 
Tirathabini
OK, I just read the description and the am. line is not a good match for what is described for Decaturia pectinalis but this may just be a poorly marked specimen. There are, however, other similar examples shown on Plate III, Alpheias ponda (Cacotherapia ponda) and Macrotheca interalbicalis (Cacotherapia interalbicalis). I found a source which mentions that Alpheias ponda may be confused with Alpheias vicarilis.

Anyway, I think this is in Tirathabini but it would be nice to get another opinion.

Moved
Moved from Moths.