Idaea muricata

Purple-bordered gold
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Geometridae
Genus:	Idaea
Species:	I. muricata
Binomial name
	Idaea muricata; Hufnagel, 1767

Idaea muricata, the purple-bordered gold, is a moth of the family Geometridae. It is found in the Palearctic.

Illustration from John Curtis's British Entomology Volume 6

The species has a wingspan of 18–20 mm. The length of the forewings is 8–10 mm.

Distribution

Western, Central and Eastern Europe. It occurs in the north to the south of the British Isles, southern Scandinavia and southern Finland. Endemic to the Western Spanish Pyrenees, Corsica, Northern Italy (with occasional occurrences up to South Italy), on the Balkan peninsula up to Bulgaria and Albania as well as in the foothills of the Caucasus range in the South. To the east of the Urals it extends to the Kuriles (Kunashir) and Japan (northeast tip of Hokkaidō) (subspecies Idaea muricata proutiana (Bryk, 1942)) as well as Korea and China (Sichuan) (species I. muricata minor (Sterneck, 1927)).

Description

The ground colour of the wings is purple. The midfield of the forewing has two yellow spots, a third spot sits at the base of the wing. The pattern is variable. The two midfield spots may be missing enlarged or fused.The interior cross line is indicated through a slight color variation. The outer crossline is blue-violet coloured, slightly wavy, and very distinctive. The outer cross line is fringed by narrow, jagged purple colour. The margin and fringes are colored yellow. A large yellow diskal spot is located on the hindwing, the midfield is fine yellow-spotted.

Biology

The adults fly at night from June to July ^[1].

^ The flight season refers to the British Isles. This may vary in other parts of the range.

External links

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