Euclemensia woodiella - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"Euclemensia" redirects here. The arctiid moth genus invalidly described by Dognin in 1914 is now Euclemensoides

Euclemensoides

Euclemensoides is a genus of moth in the family Arctiidae.-References:*...

Euclemensia woodiella, the Manchester Tinea (or Manchester Moth, since it does not belong to the Tineoidea

Tineoidea

Tineoidea is the superfamily of moths that includes clothes moths, bagworms and relatives. There are six families usually included within it, Eriocottidae, Arrhenophanidae, Lypusidae, Acrolophidae, Tineidae and Psychidae, whose relationships are currently uncertain.The Lypusidae, for example, might...

), is a yellow and brown British 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...

known by only three of examples, one of which is held by Manchester Museum

Manchester Museum

The Manchester Museum is owned by the University of Manchester. Sited on Oxford Road at the heart of the university's group of neo-Gothic buildings, it provides access to about six million items from every continent and serves both as a resource for academic research and teaching and as a regional...

, one by the Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

, London, and the type

Biological type

In biology, a type is one particular specimen of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached...

, which is in the Curtis Collection

John Curtis (entomologist)

John Curtis was an English entomologist and illustrator.-Biography:Curtis was born in Norwich and learned his engraving skills in the workshop of his father, Charles Morgan Curtis...

at Museum Victoria

Museum Victoria

Museum Victoria is an organisation which operates three major state-owned museums in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; these are: the Melbourne Museum, the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks. It also manages the Royal Exhibition Building and a storage facility in Melbourne's City of Moreland.Museum...

.

At first placed in Pancalia
Pancalia
Pancalia is a genus of moth in the family Cosmopterigidae.-Species:*Pancalia amurella Gaedike, 1967*Pancalia aureatus C.K. Yang, 1977*Pancalia baldizzonella Riedl 1994*Pancalia didesmococcusphaga Yang, 1977...

or Schiffermuelleria
Schiffermuelleria
Schiffermuelleria is a genus of gelechioid moths. It is placed in the subfamily Oecophorinae of family Oecophoridae. The genus is presently treated as monotypic, with the single species Schiffermuelleria schaefferella placed here. As such, its distinctness from the closely related genus...

, in 1864 it was separated in a monotypic

Monotypic

In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group with only one biological type. The term's usage differs slightly between botany and zoology. The term monotypic has a separate use in conservation biology, monotypic habitat, regarding species habitat conversion eliminating biodiversity and...

genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

Hamadryas by Clemens

James Brackenridge Clemens

James Brackenridge Clemens was an American entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera. He described many new species...

. However, his proposed genus name had already been used in 1806, when J. Hübner

Jacob Hübner

Jacob Hübner was a German entomologist. He was the author of Sammlung Europäischer Schmetterlinge , a founding work of entomology.-Scientific career:...

gave it to the cracker butterflies; Clemens' name was thus a junior homonym and invalid. To replace it, A.R. Grote

Augustus Radcliffe Grote

Augustus Radcliffe Grote was a British entomologist who worked mainly in America.Grote investigated, discovered and designated various butterflies and moths in North America, particularly in the USA, Mexico and Cuba.-Works:* The effect of the glacial epoch upon the distribution of insects in North...

in 1878 erected the current genus, Euclemensia
Euclemensia
Euclemensia is a genus of moth in the family Cosmopterigidae.-Species:*Euclemensia bassettella *Euclemensia barksdalensis Lee & Brown, 2011*Euclemensia schwarziella Busck, 1901*Euclemensia woodiella...

, honoring Clemens' effort. This too was monotypic at first, and while the relationships of the Manchester Tinea are now difficult to study in sufficient detail to determine if such a separation is appropriate, it does still indicate that a quite distinct and peculiar lineage was lost with the extinction of this moth.

Discovery

In 1829 an amateur insect collector named Robert Cribb, collected a series of about fifty small yellow and brown moth

Moth

s from a rotting alder

Alder

Alder is the common name of a genus of flowering plants belonging to the birch family . The genus comprises about 30 species of monoecious trees and shrubs, few reaching large size, distributed throughout the North Temperate Zone and in the Americas along the Andes southwards to...

on Kersal Moor

Kersal Moor

Kersal Moor is a recreation area in Kersal, within the City of Salford, in Greater Manchester, England, consisting of eight hectares of moorland, bounded by Moor Lane, Heathlands Road, St...

in Salford, near Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

. These turned out to be a previously unknown species of moth, but they were mistakenly attributed to a friend of Cribb’s, the collector R. Wood who had asked the entomologist John Curtis

John Curtis (entomologist)

John Curtis was an English entomologist and illustrator.-Biography:Curtis was born in Norwich and learned his engraving skills in the workshop of his father, Charles Morgan Curtis...

to identify them. The moths were named by Curtis as Pancalia woodiella in Wood's honour.

P. Woodiella Curt.Brit.Ent 304 - The only specimen I have seen of this beautiful Moth, which is larger than the others, is a female; it was taken on Kersall-Moor, the middle of last June by Mr. R. Wood of Manchester to whom I have the pleasure of dedicating it:- a most zealous and successful naturalist, to whose liberality I am indebted for many valuable insects.

- John Curtis

Enraged by this, and by accusations of fraudulently passing off foreign moths as British, Cribb gave up collecting and left the rest of the collection with his landlady as security for a debt. Here the stories from Manchester University and The Australian Museum, Victoria, differ as to whether it was Cribb's pub landlady or the landlady of his lodgings, but either way the result was the same. The debt was not paid on time and when Cribb went back for the moths, which he had already sold to another collector, his landlady had burnt them. Subsequent efforts by other collectors to find more of the moths were unsuccessful, and the three specimens left in existence are thought to be the only representatives of an extinct species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

External links

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