Caryocolum marmorea is a moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the Gelechiidae

Gelechiidae

Gelechiidae is a family of moths commonly referred to as twirler moths or gelechiid moths. They are the namesake family of the huge and little-studied superfamily Gelechioidea, and the Gelechiidae's relationships with and delimitation against their relatives have been subject to considerable...

 family. It is found from Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

 to the Mediterranean islands, and from Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 to Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 and Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

. It is also found on the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

 and Madeira

Madeira

Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...

. It is also found in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

.
The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is about 11 mm. Adults are on wing from May to August.

The larvae feed on Cerastium fontanum

Cerastium fontanum

Cerastium fontanum, also called Common mouse-ear, is a species of mat forming perennial, or rarely, annual plant. It is native to Europe but introduced elsewhere....

, Cerastium semidecandrum, Silene nocteolens and Silene otites. They mine

Leaf miner

Leaf miner is a term used to describe the larvae of many different species of insect which live in and eat the leaf tissue of plants. The vast majority of leaf-mining insects are moths , sawflies and flies , though some beetles and wasps also exhibit this behavior.Like Woodboring beetles, leaf...

 the leaves of their host plant. In Cerastium

Cerastium

Cerastium is a genus of annual, winter annual, or perennial plants belonging to the family Caryophyllaceae. The around 100 species are commonly called Mouse-ear chickweed; different species are found nearly worldwide but the greatest concentration is mainly from the northern temperate areas of the...

, young larvae make an irregular, semitransparent, upper-surface corridor, usually running from the leaf tip to the base along the midrib or the leaf margin. The oldest part of the mine is filled with greenish brown frass

Frass

Frass is the fine powdery material phytophagous insects pass as waste after digesting plant parts. It causes plants to excrete chitinase due to high chitin levels, it is a natural bloom stimulant, and has high nutrient levels. Frass is known to have abundant amoeba, beneficial bacteria, and fungi...

. After mining the leaf, the larva bores into the stem. Older larvae live freely, feeding on the leaves from a silken tube or between spun leaves. Larvae can be found from January to February. They are greenish yellow with three dirty green dorsal length lines and a black head.

Subspecies

• Caryocolum marmorea marmorea
• Caryocolum marmorea pulchra (Wollaston, 1858)