Phalonidia lavana

From Busck, 1907, sp.n.:

Labial palpi white, shaded with light fuscous. Face and head dirty white. Thorax light fuscous. Fore wings silvery white, mottled and marked with black and brown. Costal edge is tinged with brown, especially at base marked with about sixteen equidistant small black streaks from base to apex. On the middle of the wing three of these streaks are combined into a larger spot by intervening dark brown scales, and from the spot is emitted an indistinct, poorly defined brown shade across the wing. Basal third of the wing is nearly unmottled, but the apical part is somewhat darkened by irregular black striation. The apical two-thirds of the dorsal edge is also marked with small black streaks and the tip of the wing is strongly mottled with black and brown scales. Hind wings whitish silvery fuscous. Abdomen dark fuscous. Legs, whitish; anterior tarsal joints annulated with black.[5]

When Razowski transferred P. lavana to the Platphalonidia genus in 1997, he redescribed the species:

Wingspan 14–16mm. Head brownish grey with pink-violet hue and some black scales; labial palpus 2; thorax concolorous with head. Forewing in male expanding terminally, slightly so in female. Ground-colour creamy white, with olive hue, strigulated grey; blackish dots along costa and dorsum; diffuse grey fasciae in distal half of wing, scaled back towards apex. Median fascia olive brown-grey, divided into large dorsal part broadest at middle of wing and smaller costal part. Fringes whitish suffused grey or blackish. Hindwing white-grey, fringes whitish with grey basal line.

Variation. Pattern often ill-defined, occasionally darker in apical area [than] in middle, or median fascia reduced to a blackish dorsal blotch.

The only Canadian specimen has whitish ground-colour indistinctly but densely strigulated olive-grey, blackish suffusion of wing base, ferruginous, edged black dorsal blotch followed by grey costal mark.

Male genitalia of Canadian specimens: Valva broad basally, then strongly tapering terminad; sacculus broad, rounded ventrally; median part of transtilla very slender, with small apical thorns; aedeagus distinctly bent; cornutus slender, straight.

Female genitalia of the type specimen characterizes with well sclerotized, rather short cup-shaped sclerite of sterigma and short ductus bursae provided with longitudinal sclerites.[6]

For a key to the terms used, see Glossary of entomology terms.

Side view of P. lavana

• Colonial Breeder: No
• Non-Migrant: No
• Locally Migrant: No
• Long Distance Migrant: No[2]