A team of researchers from Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom has announced the discovery of a new moth species in Europe, which they named Mirlatia arcuata. The moth belongs to the Geometrid family, which includes about 11,000 species of butterflies and moths. However, Mirlatia arcuata is so different from any known species that it was assigned to a new genus as well.
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The discovery of Mirlatia arcuata is one of the most remarkable findings in Lepidoptera (the order of insects that includes butterflies and moths) in recent decades, according to the researchers.
The moth has a distinctive appearance, with a wingspan of about 25 millimeters, a brownish-gray color, and a curved forewing. The moth also has unique genital structures, which are important for identifying and classifying moths.
The story of how Mirlatia arcuata was discovered is also fascinating. The moth was first collected in the early 1980s by an Austrian amateur entomologist, Robert Hentscholek, who found three specimens in southern Dalmatia, Croatia. He did not recognize the moth and gave it to some colleagues, who also could not identify it. The specimens were then integrated into different collections and forgotten for decades.
In 2015, one of the specimens was rediscovered in the Natural History Museum in Vienna by another Austrian hobbyist researcher, Toni Mayr, who noticed the unusual insect and contacted Hentscholek for more information. He learned that another specimen was given to a collector who had passed away, and the third specimen was still in Hentscholek's collection. Mayr managed to obtain the unique male specimen and presented it to the Tyrolean Federal State Museums, where he met Peter Huemer, a researcher who specializes in Lepidoptera.
Huemer formed a research team with Axel Hausmann from the Zoological State Collection in Munich and Marko Mutanen from the University of Oulu in Finland to study the mysterious moth. They used molecular and morphological methods to compare Mirlatia arcuata with other known moths from Europe and other regions. They concluded that the moth was not only a new species, but also a new genus, and published their results in the scientific journal ZooKeys in November 2023.
The researchers also speculated about the origin and ecology of Mirlatia arcuata. They ruled out the possibility that the moth was introduced from another continent, as there is no similar species in other cold regions. They also suggested that the moth might be a cold-adapted, winter-active species, as it was collected in March, when most moths are not flying. However, they admitted that more fieldwork is needed to confirm this hypothesis and to find out more about the distribution, habitat, and behavior of Mirlatia arcuata.
The discovery of Mirlatia arcuata shows that there is still much to learn about the biodiversity of Europe, especially in regions that are less explored or have different climatic conditions. The researchers hope that their finding will inspire more interest and research in the field of Lepidoptera, and that more hidden species will be revealed in the future.