| | Insects of Britain and Ireland: the genera of Lepidoptera-Noctuidae |
Adults. Head fairly smooth. Head with a frontal tuft (this slight), or without a frontal tuft. Eyes glabrous; not ciliated. Antennae of males ciliate. Labial palps medium to long; porrect.
Wingspan 19–25 mm. Thorax coloured like the forewings, the abdomen more like the hindwings. Forewings straw-coloured; patterned transversely; the patterning obscure (narrowly brown-margined, and very faintly twice-transversely lined); reniform defined (brown); orbicular undefined; claviform undefined. Hindwings whitish-fuscous and yellowish (tinged); plain; without a clear discal mark; transversely lined to without transverse lines (no more than faintly so); exhibiting vein 5. Vein 5 of the hindwings strong; arising nearer to vein 4 than to vein 6; convergent on vein 4 near their bases. Thorax not crested. The males not fan-footed. Middle tibiae without spines. Posterior tibiae with spines; with appressed scales. Abdomen not crested.
Living adults found June and July.
Larvae, pupae. Larvae feeding on grasses; pupating on vegetative parts of the foodplant (drawing together the edges of a leaf blade).
British representation. 1 species; South-east England, Central-southern England, South-west England, English Midlands, Northern England, Southern Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; sericealis (Straw Dot).
Rivulinae.
Illustrations. • R. sericealis (Straw Dot) and other Ophiderinae. 1, Tyta luctuosa (The Four-spotted); 2*, Tathorhynchus exsiccata (Levant Blackneck: Amphipyrinae); 3, Lygephila pastinum (Blackneck); 4, Lygephila cracca (Scarce Blackneck); 5, Colobochyla salicalis (Lesser Belle); 6, Rivula sericealis (Straw Dot); 7, Scoliopteryx libatrix (Herald); 8, Phytometra viridaria (Small Purple-barred); 9, Parascotia fuliginaria (Waved Black); 10, Laspeyria flexula (Beautiful Hook-tip). Swain, 1961.
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the genera of Lepidoptera-Noctuidae. Version: 14th February 2021. delta-intkey.com’.
