Our small polytunnel acts a bit like an interception trap, and I check it each evening to see what moths and other insects have flown in. Recent highlights have included the Longhorn Beetle Tetrops praeusta new for Dingestow and the gorgeous (and shy) Tortricid Endothenia nigricostana (photo below); over the last year it has also produced interesting Hoverflies, Horseflies, the first Gwent record of Pammene ochsenheimeriana and the first Dingestow record of Ectoedemia sericopeza.
A couple of evenings ago I noticed a brightly-marked (for a Bryotropha), rather short-winged Gelechid which looked unfamiliar. There were rather a lot of yellowish areas, and various dark stigmata, and although the general appearance was a bit like B. affinis it didn't seem right. Quite a lot of searching on-line eventually led me to the difficult species pair Brytropha basaltinella and B. dryadella, neither of which had been recorded in Wales previously as far as I can tell. Gelechid Recording Scheme organiser Steve Palmer confirmed that I would need to dissect my moth to identify it, so I spent an hour last night trying to work out what the shape of the gnathos meant and where the thornshield was. I finally concluded that it was indeed B. basaltinella, with a short gnathos (ruling out B. affinis and various other species) and a roughly triangular thornshield sporting 24 spikes (ruling out B. dryadella); its gnathos also had an 'extension', which Steve pointed out as being present in on-line photos of B. basaltinella gen preps but not those of B. dryadella. It was quite a lot of effort, but worth it in the end!
I labelled the wrong thing as an 'extension', although that knobbly bit on the gnathos does match images in MBGBI and on-line and seems to be absent from similar images of B. dryadella.
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