Panthea apanthea

Male and female moderately dimorphic, female larger and with darker hindwing than male; forewing length: 4-15 mm (male), 18 mm (female). Head – male antenna bipectinate, pectinations approximately 1.5 × as long as width of antennal shaft, female antenna simple; palps greatly reduced, clothed in dark brownish-gray hair-like scales. Thorax – collar, thorax and tegulae a mix of dark black-brown and white hair-like scales; tegulae with two poorly defined oblique bands; femur and tibia clothed in a mixture of black and white hair; tarsus banded black and white. Dorsal forewing – with an even mixture of brownish-black and white scales, appearing gray. Lines black but not strongly contrasting with ground and difficult to trace. Basal line indicated by a small patch of black scales, antemedial line black, complete, more prominent than other lines, straight to anal vein, bending distad before continuing to lower margin; medial line faint, slightly erratic, less prominent than basal line and difficult to trace in some specimens, merging or nearly so with black scales at end of cell; postmedial line slightly more prominent and more erratic, bending distad at fold and wandering outward toward costa; subterminal line erratic, bordered on distal side mainly on upper half by a few white scales; terminal line black, broken at veins; fringe black, lightly checkered with white at veins. Normal spots obsolete, except reniform spot indicated by a small, dark, poorly defined crescent or bar at end of cell; veins lightly lined with dark scales. Dorsal hindwing (male) – white with four very faint diffuse bands formed by tiny hair-like scattered gray scales, with long pale-gray hairs along inner margin and a dark gray-black terminal line; fringe dark gray black, lightly checkered at veins. Dorsal hindwing (female) – as in male, but with a heavier dusting of small dark scales forming wider bands, appearing light gray overall. Abdomen – covered with short stiff brownishblack and white hair-like scales. Male genitalia – (Fig. 45) valve relatively short, sacculus large, extending two-thirds distance across valve, with rows of small sawlike teeth along inner ridge; cucullus extending only a short distance beyond clasper, ending in a small wing-like flap folding in toward clasper; clasper large with almost half length extending past upper margin of valve, straight, tapering to a wide base; tegumen with ear-like subuncal lobes; uncus nearly obsolete, reduced to a pair of widely spaced flat rounded lobes, reminiscent of arachnid palps; aedeagus 2 × as long ventrally as dorsally; inflated vesica a short oblong sac, about 2 × as long as wide, exiting aedeagus at 90 degrees dorsad, with a large teardrop-shaped field of densely packed fleshy-appearing spines on right side near terminus; ductus exiting from terminus of vesica, oriented anteriorly. Female genitalia – (Fig. 58) papillae anales large, soft, oblong, with sparse fine long setae; posterior and anterior apophyses approximately equal in size and of average length; sterigma poorly developed, lightly sclerotized, with two large shallow indentations above ostium; ductus bursae short, wide, expanding into a thicker walled wrinkled section with a series of parallel wrinkled and sclerotized “gullies” along dorsal wall, widening gradually into an oblong, thin-walled translucent corpus bursae, without signa; ductus seminalis exiting dorsad on upper right.

Distribution and biology. Panthea apanthea is known from only 10 specimens and from only three areas in the southwestern United States; Coconino County and Apache County (White Mountains) in Arizona, and El Paso County in east-central Colorado (Fig. 69). It has been collected at moderate elevations (1500-2150 m) during the first three weeks of August. Nothing else is known of its biology.