The Pine Webworm Moth is a species of 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 Pyralidae

Pyralidae

The Pyralidae or snout moths are a family of Lepidoptera in the ditrysian superfamily Pyraloidea. In many classifications, the grass moths are included in the Pyralidae as a subfamily, making the combined group one of the largest families in the Lepidoptera...

 family. It is found in southern 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...

 and the eastern United States

United States

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

 from Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 to New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 and south to 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...

.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 22-25 mm. Adults are grey to brownish. The basal third of the forewing is dark grey to black, while the rest of the forewing pale grey, becoming darker grey toward the outer half. The hindwings are brown with darker shading toward the outer margin. The number of generations per year varies from three in north-eastern Florida to one in the northern part of the range. In Florida, adults are on wing from April to October.

The larvae feed on the needles of various Pinus species. Young larvae mine the needles of their host plant. Later, they spin a nest of silk webbing and 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...

. They gather needles from around their nest and bring them back to the nest to eat. The web is occupied by several larvae. The larvae are light brown with darker longitudinal stripes and a light brown head with black pigmented markings.