GBOL Altitude record

Plutella geniatella

I just browsed through this weeks press releases and articles and found some interesting news from Germany. Since it is only available in German I thought I translate a brief part and share it with a wider audience.

Last summer Jörg Spelda, Stefan Friedrich und Roland Melzer, researchers of the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich went on a field trip to Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze (2,962m) with the goal to comprehensively catalog the peak fauna. They caught a moth very close to the peak, barcoded it and it is now considered the record holder in the category highest altitude DNA Barcode in Germany.

This little moth belongs to a rather rare species (Plutella geniatella) which  in Germany was observed the last time in 1989. It is only known from mountain tops in the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains. It is a relative of the diamondback moth that I blogged about a while back.

The German common name is not only a tongue-twister but to me represents a fascinating attempt to be creative, descriptive, and comprehensive at the same time: 

Felsenblümchen-Schleierfalter which means by my literal translation  Rockfloret-Veilmoth.