Urania sloanus

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Sloan’s Urania (Urania sloanus)

Lithograph of Cydimon sloanus (top) published in 1897 for A Handbook to the Order Lepidoptera by W.F.Kirby

Extinct (ca. 1894)

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Superfamily:	Geometroidea
Family:	Uraniidae
Subfamily:	Uraniinae Blanchard, 1845
Genus:	Urania Fabricius, 1807
Species:	U. sloanus

Binomial name

Urania sloanus
(Cramer, 1779)

Former range in red (Jamaica)

Synonyms

Cydimon sloanus

Sloan's Urania (Urania sloanus) was a moth of the Uraniidae family, last reported in 1894 or 1895.^[1]

It was black with iridescent red, blue and green markings. The iridescent parts of the wings do not have pigment; as determined by optical sciences for the species Urania fulgens belonging to the same genus,^[2] the color originates from refraction of light by the ribbon-like scales covering the moth's wings.

This moth is considered “the most spectacular Urania species”.^[1] As most species of the subfamily Uraniinae, it was a day flying moth while most moths are active at night; its bright colors advertised, as a warning, the fact that it was also toxic.

Based on our knowledge of extant Urania species, we can assume that Sloan's Urania migrated between patches of host plants, after population explosions locally defoliated them. This probably required relatively large, intact areas of lowland forest.^[3] It was endemic to Jamaica. Habitat loss when Jamaica's lowland rainforests were cleared and converted to agricultural land during the colonial era may have contributed to its extinction, but large parts of primary forest still remain. Thus, the more probable answer to its extinction would be that the moth population “crashed below a sustainable level, perhaps a victim of loss of one of its larval foodplants” such as the toxic Omphalea triandra L. and O. diandra. Like other members of the genus Urania, periodic swarms of moths were separated by years of great scarcity.^[1]

The genus name Urania is New Latin from Latin Urania from Ancient Greek Ουρανία, one of the Muses, literally 'The Heavenly One'. The specific epithet sloanus is NL. probably after Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753),^[4] an English collector whose collection became the foundation of the British Museum.