Rhagades amasina
Rhagades amasina is a butterfly of the family of burnet ( Zygaenidae ).
Features
The moths reach a forewing length 9.0 to 10.5 mm in males and 8.5 to 9.5 mm in females. Head, thorax and abdomen are brownish black, and occasionally covered with shiny scales. The antennae have 39 to 42 segments. The front wing tops are brownish-black and olive green shimmer. The hind wings are gray black and proximally slightly translucent. The females are slightly lighter colored than the males. In the males, the distal Valven have a distinctive double teeth. The aedeagus has a long, nearly straight running cornutus, a short bent and a very short tooth-like cornutus. In females, the ostium is slightly offset laterally and between the fused sternites 7 and 8 slots. The Präbursa is equipped with distinctive spines. The 7th sternite has a distally strongly sclerotized edge and is completely merged with the also well-trained and heavily sclerotized sternite 8. The eighth sternite is rectangular and has small, but well-developed Apophysenanhänge.
A similar type is rhagades predotae shimmering purple-violet and occurs only on the Iberian Peninsula. The Dark Grünwidderchen ( rhagades pruni ) is colored for several bluish green, scaly less dense and does not occur in Turkey and the Middle East. Both types can be distinguished genitalmorphologisch.
The egg is whitish yellow and always covered with some after- shed of the female, so that the impression of a dark mottling arises. It is slightly flattened at one end and shows at the round end of a weakly indicated capping. The egg surface is reminiscent of hammered metal and is slightly serrated along.
In the first three stages of the caterpillar is gray white and almost without markings. In the fourth stage (L4 ) is provided pale and dark gray with short bristles. After wintering she is black and has dark hair tufts. In L7- stage change in physical appearance again: The caterpillar is now jet black, the ventral side of vermilion. The head is shiny black, the buttons are dark brown. The bristle warts are also black. The bristles are colored differently: the black back strip closes on both sides of a white area, followed by a red-brown line. The pages are white, the belly is vermilion.
The pupa is blackish brown and can not be distinguished from a rhagades pruni doll.
Dissemination
Rhagades amasina comes in Greece on the islands of Kos and Rhodes, is still the kind in Turkey, distributed in northern Syria and Lebanon. Be colonized calcareous habitats with a bushy Prunus and Crataegus growth.
Biology
The females lay eggs in shallow Eispiegeln of 10 to 40 pieces from the leaves. Among the food plants include Rosaceae, Prunus and Crataegus species. The caterpillars hatch under farming conditions at room temperature after ten to twelve days. They feed by so-called Schabefraß on the leaves, in which the middle lamella of the leaf remains. From the third stage, the caterpillars also eat holes in the leaves (grid feeding ). In the fourth stage (L4 ) the caterpillar assumes no food on, produces a loose white cocoon ( Hibernarium ) and wintered in with retracted head and closely attracted a Torah calf. The caterpillars shed their skin in a white cocoon. The adult caterpillars pupate in a white, egg-shaped cocoon, which is usually pieced in the center of the page. The leaf margins are rolled over the cocoon. Under farming conditions, the moths hatched at room temperature after 20 days.