3837 – Rolandylis maiana – Kearfott's Rolandylis Moth

I must have had some success researching this moth some time after I sent it in. I currently have it IDed as 3837.

With the exception of a few Aethes, this is a notoriously group of moths to ID without dissection. The tribe is in bad need of revision. Many of the images at MPG and here have probably been misidentified.

I added the following to Books:

Meltzer, E.H. & Brown, J.W., 2014. An updated check list of the Cochylina (Tortricidae, Tortricinae, Euliini) of North America north of Mexico including Greenland, with comments on classification and identification. Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society. 68(4): 274–282 (1)

Cochylini is to be treated as a subtribe, Cochylina, of Euliini. I was sent this last month by John W. Brown as a response to an email I sent to Todd Gilligan. The changes are not all reflected at Tortricid.net but I believe they will be.

Oddly, we were both wrong. Tribe was not that safe. I'll add a comment to the Moth Forum to make sure no one objects to following this paper.

I got it reversed. Cochylini, being older, replaces Euliini. I was confused by the wording in the paper.

I was not aware of this revision. Thanks!

Thanks for clearing out the family. It's a huge help even if most only move to subfamily.

Getting the 2500+ images stuck at "family" down to "subfamily" is fairly easy. It's getting them down to genus that will be trickier. I have about 900 more to go. I'm hoping to get them all to down to subfamily by sometime tonight or tomorrow. Then the real fun begins :)

It does not seem to exactly match the original description here which notes the head, thorax and legs are cream-white. Not sure which if any of the images at MPG are identified correctly. My guess would be Cochylis hoffmanana which is known to be variable and more common. See comments by expert here. There are several dozen specimens at BOLD which are barcoded to C. hoffmanana and none for maiana so it is not even possible to compare the two using BOLD tools.

Thanks for the tips. Wow, the more I learn the more I have to learn. I will spend some more time with my photographs. I see this moth annually now, but I would not call it dirt common in my area. Looking at MPG's and BG's sites for both moths, they really all start to look so similar to me.