''Autosticha authaema'' is a

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

in the family Autostichidae. It was described by Edward Meyrick in 1906. It is found in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. The

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

is 12–13 mm. The forewings are pale ochreous, irrorated (sprinkled) with fuscous and dark fuscous. The stigmata are rather large and dark fuscous, with the plical nearly beneath the first discal. There is a small dark fuscous pre-tornal spot and an almost marginal series of dark fuscous dots along the posterior half of the costa and termen. The hindwings are grey, darker in females. The larvae construct heliciform cases on the surface of moss-covered rocks. The cases consist of a gradually dilated gallery coiled in a flat rounded spiral, and are composed of silk closely covered with grains of sand and fragments of lichens.''Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society''. 17 (1): 141.

References

Moths described in 1906 Autosticha Moths of Asia {{autostichinae-stub