The Beautiful Cosmopterix Moth (Cosmopterix pulchrimella) is a moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the Cosmopterigidae

Cosmopterigidae

Cosmopterigidae is a family of insects in the Lepidoptera order. These are small moths with narrow wings whose tiny larvae feed internally on the leaves, seeds, stems, etc of their host plants. There are about 1,500 described species...

 family. It is known from the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 (from Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

 and southern Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

 south to southern Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 and southern Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

, New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

) and Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. It is also present in the Palaearctic ecozone, where it is known from the Mediterranean region, from Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 to the western Transcaucasus, north to Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 and Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

. It has also been recorded from the Azores

Azores

The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...

, the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

 and Madeira

Madeira

Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...

. It has recently been found in southern England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Adult

Male, female. Forewing length 3.0-4.0 mm. Head: frons shining grey, shining white towards clypeus, vertex and neck tufts shining dark brown, laterally and medially lined white, collar shining dark brown; labial palpus first segment very short, white, second segment four-fifths of the length of third, shining white on inside, dark brown with a white longitudinal line on outside, third segment white, lined brown laterally; scape dorsally shining dark brown with a white anterior line, ventrally shining white, antenna shining dark brown with a white interrupted line from base to beyond one-half, near base often uninterrupted, followed towards apex by five dark brown segments, one white, one dark brown, one white, three dark brown, one white, approximately twelve dark brown, three white and five dark brown segments at apex. Thorax and tegulae shining dark brown, thorax with a white median line. Legs: shining dark brown, foreleg with a white line on tibia and tarsal segment one, tibia of midleg with white oblique basal and medial lines and a white apical ring, tarsal segments one and two with white apical rings, segment five entirely white, tibia of hindleg as midleg, tarsal segments four and five entirely white, spurs white dorsally, brown ventrally. Forewing shining dark brown, three short silver streaks in the basal area, sometimes with a pale golden gloss, a subcostal nearest to base and bending from costa distally, a shorter medial underneath the distal end of the subcostal, a subdorsal, as long as the subcostal but further from base, a bright orange transverse fascia beyond the middle, narrowing towards dorsum, in some of the specimens from the USA the fascia is partly or completely darkened, bordered at the inner edge by broad tubercular pale golden metallic fascia, sometimes with a pinkish gloss, perpendicular at dorsum, edged blackish on the outside, bordered at the outer edge by a similarly coloured inwardly oblique fascia, edged blackish on the inside, at the costa of the outer fascia a broad white costal streak, the apical line as a silver metallic spot with bluish reflection in the middle of the apical area and a broad white spot in the cilia at apex, cilia dark brown. Hindwing shining brown, cilia brown. Underside: forewing shining dark greyish brown, the white costal streak and apical spot distinctly visible, hindwing shining dark greyish brown. Abdomen shining dark brown dorsally, ventrally segments banded white posteriorly, anal tuft brown.

Larva

Head and prothoracic plate black, anal plate greyish brown, thoracic legs pale brown, body greyish white.

Biology

The larvae feed on Parietaria officinalis

Parietaria officinalis

Parietaria officinalis, the Pellitory-of-the-wall, also known as lichwort, is a plant of the nettle family. Its leaves, however, are non-stinging. The plant grows on rubbish and on walls, hence the name...

, Parietaria pensylvanica

Parietaria pensylvanica

Parietaria pensylvanica is a species of flowering plant in the nettle family known by the common name Pennsylvania pellitory. It is native to much of North America including most of southern Canada, the entire United States, and northern Mexico. It grows in many types of habitat, including...

and Pilea pumila

Pilea pumila

Pilea pumila, known as Clearweed, Canadian clearweed, Coolwort, or Richweed is an annual plant native to most of North America east of the Rockies...

. They mine

Leaf miner

Leaf miner is a term used to describe the larvae of many different species of insect which live in and eat the leaf tissue of plants. The vast majority of leaf-mining insects are moths , sawflies and flies , though some beetles and wasps also exhibit this behavior.Like Woodboring beetles, leaf...

 the leaves of their host plant. The mines starts as an irregular gallery usually at the midrib, soon leading to an irregular blotch. Inside the mine a silken spinning is found, which often causes contortion of the leaf. The larva constructs a silk-lined gallery, which serves as a shelter when the larva is not feeding. The frass

Frass

Frass is the fine powdery material phytophagous insects pass as waste after digesting plant parts. It causes plants to excrete chitinase due to high chitin levels, it is a natural bloom stimulant, and has high nutrient levels. Frass is known to have abundant amoeba, beneficial bacteria, and fungi...

is partly inside the mine, but most of it is rejected through a hole at the beginning of the mine. The black pellets of frass on the underside of a leaf indicate the presence of a larva. New mines are made very often. The cocoon is found inside the mine. The species is bivoltine, with adults on wing throughout the year in southern areas.