Hemaris tityus

Hemaris tityus
Hemaris tityus
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Sphingidae
Genus:	Hemaris
Species:	H. tityus
Binomial name
Hemaris tityus (Linnaeus, 1758)[1]
Synonyms
Sphinx tityus Linnaeus, 1758 Sphinx musca Retzius, 1783 Sphinx bombyliformis Linnaeus, 1758 Macroglossa scabiosae Zeller, 1869 Macroglossa knautiae Zeller, 1869 Hemaris tityus reducta Closs, 1917 Hemaris tityus karaugomica Wojtusiak & Niesiolowski, 1946 Hemaris tityus flavescens Cockayne, 1953 Haemorrhagia tityus ferrugineus Stephan, 1924

Hemaris tityus, the narrow-bordered bee hawk-moth has a wide range, from Ireland across temperate Europe to the Ural Mountains, western Siberia, Novosibirsk and the Altai. It is also known from the Tian Shan eastwards across Mongolia to north-eastern China and southwards to Tibet. There is a separate population found from Turkey to northern Iran.

It appears in May and June and is a lively day-flier (unlike most other sphingids), generally active from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.^[2] 'Hemaris' comes from the Greek Hemera, which means 'the day'.^[3]

It frequents marshy woodland and damp moorland, and has a wide distribution across temperate Europe and Western Asia, but is generally quite scarce.

The larvae feed on devil's-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) and field scabious (Knautia arvensis). Wingspan 40–50 millimetres (1.6–2.0 in).

British Isles

It is one of two similar species of sphingid moth occurring in Britain that closely mimic a bumblebee. It is distinguished from Hemaris fuciformis by the narrow band of scaling along the outer wing margin and the presence of the undivided forewing cell.

Pictures

• 

  Illustration from John Curtis's British Entomology Volume 5

• 

  Hemaris tityus in Estonia. Photo by Urmas Tartes.

External links

• Hemaris tityus, European Butterflies and Moths
• Description in Richard South The Moths of the British Isles

References