''Pyncostola pachyacma'' 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 ...

of the family

Gelechiidae The Gelechiidae are a family of moths commonly referred to as twirler moths or gelechiid moths. They are the namesake family of the huge and little-studied superfamily Gelechioidea, and the family's taxonomy has been subject to considerable d ...

. It was described by

Edward Meyrick Edward Meyrick (25 November 1854, in Ramsbury – 31 March 1938, at Thornhanger, Marlborough) was an English schoolmaster and amateur entomologist. He was an expert on microlepidoptera and some consider him one of the founders of modern m ...

in 1926. It is found in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring count ...

, where it has been recorded from the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

. 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 ...

is about 20 mm. The forewings are white, irregularly irrorated (sprinkled) with dark grey with a ferruginous-ochreous spot at the base of the dorsum and an oblique bar of dark grey suffusion from the base of the costa to the fold, spotted with ferruginous ochreous on the extremities. There is an oval spot of dark grey irroration suffused with ferruginous ochreous towards the costa at one-third. The stigmata form dark grey spots suffused with larger ferruginous-ochreous spots, the plical obliquely before the first discal. The dorsal edge is shortly ferruginous ochreous before the tornus and a streak of ferruginous-ochreous suffusion along the lower three-fifths of the termen. The hindwings are grey whitish.''Annals of the South African Museum''. 23: 328.

References

Endemic moths of South Africa Moths described in 1926 Pyncostola {{Anomologinae-stub