Plusia

Plusia
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Noctuidae
Genus:	Plusia; Ochsenheimer, 1816

Plusia is a genus of moths of the Noctuidae family.

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. Fore wings hooked at outer angle. Larva with two pairs of abdominal prolegs.^[1]

Species

Plusia contexta Grote, 1873
Plusia festucae - Gold Spot Linnaeus, 1758
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.
Natural History Museum Lepidoptera genus database
Plusia at funet.fi

^ Hampson G. F. (1892). "The Fauna Of British India Including Ceylon And Burma Moths Vol-ii". Digital Library of India. p. 558. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
^ 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. (1892). "The Fauna Of British India Including Ceylon And Burma Moths Vol-ii". Digital Library of India. p. 558. Retrieved 4 July 2016.

[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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