Adscita geryon

Adscita geryon, the cistus forester, is a moth of the family Zygaenidae. It is found in southern and central Europe, east to Turkey. It is also present in Great Britain.^[2] It was first described by the German entomologist Jacob Hübner in 1813.

Cistus forester
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Zygaenidae
Genus:	Adscita
Species:	A. geryon
Binomial name
Adscita geryon (Hübner, 1813)[1]
Synonyms
Sphinx geryon Hubner, 1813 Procris geryon Adscita geryon chrysocephala Nickerl, 1845 Adscita geryon r. aeris Verity, 1946 Adscita geryon parisiensis Leraut, 2012

The wingspan is 20–25 mm.^[3][4] The larvae can be found from July to May of the following year.

Subspecies

• Adscita geryon geryon (from the Iberian Peninsula and Britain to European Russia, the Crimea and Turkey)
• Adscita geryon acutafibra Verity, 1946
• Adscita geryon orientalis (Alberti, 1938)

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  Specimen
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  Illustration
• Adscita geryon mating (video, 1m 55s)
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  Figs. 3, 3a larvae after last moult

Etymology

Adscita from adscitus, meaning adopted or enrolled was originally a Carl Linnaeus name. Linnaeus divided the hawk-moths into four groups, three of which he called the true hawk-moths and the fourth, ″a group of seven hangers-on, in default of a better position″. In 1783 Retzius was the first to use Adscita as a genus and he kept two of these moths in the Adscita, i.e. statices and filipendulae (the six-spot burnet, which was later assigned to Zygaena). Hubner gave the moth the specific name geryon, which refers to Geryon a mythical three-headed monster killed by Heracles.^[5]