Plusia

Plusia
	Plusia festucae
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Superfamily:	Noctuoidea
Family:	Noctuidae
Subtribe:	Plusiina
Genus:	Plusia; Ochsenheimer, 1816

Plusia is a genus of moths of the family Noctuidae. The genus was erected by Ferdinand Ochsenheimer in 1816.

Description

Palpi upturned, where the second joint reaching vertex of head. Antennae of male ciliated. Thorax with a very large spreading tuft on the vertex. Abdomen with three large dorsal tufts on basal segments, and lateral and anal tufts more or less strongly developed in male. Forewings hooked at outer angle. Larva with two pairs of abdominal prolegs.^[1]

Species

Plusia contexta Grote, 1873
Plusia festucae Linnaeus, 1758 - gold spot
Plusia magnimacula D. Handfield & L. Handfield, 2006
Plusia manchurica Lempke, 1966
Plusia nichollae Hampson, 1913
Plusia putnami Grote, 1873
Plusia rosanovi Nabokov, 1912^[2]
Plusia venusta Walker, 1865

References

Handfield, D.; Handfield, L. (2006). "A new species of Plusia (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) from North America". The Canadian Entomologist. 138 (6): 853–859. doi:10.4039/N06-041.
Pitkin, Brian & Jenkins, Paul. "Search results Family: Noctuidae". Butterflies and Moths of the World. Natural History Museum, London.
Savela, Markku. "Plusia Ochsenheimer, 1816". Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms. Retrieved January 22, 2019.

^ Hampson, G. F. (1894). The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma: Moths Volume II. Taylor and Francis – via Biodiversity Heritage Library.
^ Writer Vladimir Nabokov paraphrased his father's description of the owlet moth Plusia rosanovi (as it appeared in Volume III of the four-volume Butterflies and Moths of the Russian Empire, 1912) in his posthumous essay "Father's Butterflies", printed in The Atlantic, April 2000: "How lovely it is, by the way, how one's eye is caressed by, the dark-cherry forewing, traversed by a mauve-pink stripe and adorned at its center by the golden emblem of its genus, in this instance a tapering, bowed half-moon -- and if it is hard to render the flowery velvet of the background, what is one to say of the 'emblem,' which, on the actual moth, resembles a dab of gilt redolent of turpentine, and must therefore be copied (and recopied!) in such a way that the painter's work transmits, besides all the rest, a resemblance to the work of a painter!"

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[1] Hampson, G. F. (1894). The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma: Moths Volume II. Taylor and Francis – via Biodiversity Heritage Library.

[2] Writer Vladimir Nabokov paraphrased his father's description of the owlet moth Plusia rosanovi (as it appeared in Volume III of the four-volume Butterflies and Moths of the Russian Empire, 1912) in his posthumous essay "Father's Butterflies", printed in The Atlantic, April 2000: "How lovely it is, by the way, how one's eye is caressed by, the dark-cherry forewing, traversed by a mauve-pink stripe and adorned at its center by the golden emblem of its genus, in this instance a tapering, bowed half-moon -- and if it is hard to render the flowery velvet of the background, what is one to say of the 'emblem,' which, on the actual moth, resembles a dab of gilt redolent of turpentine, and must therefore be copied (and recopied!) in such a way that the painter's work transmits, besides all the rest, a resemblance to the work of a painter!"

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