''Cautethia yucatana'' is a species of

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 ...

in the family

Sphingidae The Sphingidae are a family of moths ( Lepidoptera) called sphinx moths, also colloquially known as hawk moths, with many of their caterpillars known as “hornworms”; it includes about 1,450 species. It is best represented in the tropics, ...

, which is known from

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

and

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

south to

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

. It was described by

Benjamin Preston Clark Benjamin Preston Clark (October 8, 1860, in West Roxbury – January 11, 1939, in Philadelphia), known to friends as "Preston", was an American entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past t ...

in 1919. Female moths in this species have a wingspan of 16 millimetres. It is very similar to ''

Cautethia spuria ''Cautethia spuria'', the spurious sphinx, is a moth of the family Sphingidae. The species was first described by Jean Baptiste Boisduval in 1875. It lives from Mexico to Costa Rica to southern Texas and Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw la ...

'' but smaller, and the forewings are shorter and more rounded. The forewing upperside ground color is smoky gray. The tornus has a dark bar, narrowing and continuing obscurely to the midpoint of the costal margin. The basal area of the hindwing upperside is pale yellow. There is a black marginal band extending almost to the discal cell.

References

External links

''Cautethia yucatana''
Sphingidae of the Americas Cautethia Moths described in 1919 Taxa named by Benjamin Preston Clark Moths of North America Moths of Central America {{Dilophonotini-stub