Region, Kyrgyzstan, on an expedition of the Zoological Institute of the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1913, which has been classified as different species (Gynaephora rossii and G. selenitica), according to Kozhanchikov this was a specimen of L. selenophora. Ecology The caterpillars are mimics of the caterpillars of Micrarctia, a genus of moths in the subfamily Arctiidae, and are black (but dark rusty on the thoracic segments) with no distinct dorsal brushes or hair-pencils. The caterpillars feed on grass species in the genus Dactylis. The males fly during the day from the second half of June to early August. The male are "heliophilous", seeking out light. They fly calmly and low over the ground, and as such are easy to capture, and are only found out before midday. The females lay their eggs within the cocoons they pupated in. Grum-Grshimailo encountered his specimens in the Pamir Mountains always in the same habitats: small patches of thawed ground amongst snowy fields, in somewhat wet areas, and amongst Ranunculaceae beginning to flower and herbs including what he thought were perhaps Gentiana. Conservation This insect has only unambiguously been collected by three people over the past one and a half century. The first was one Herr Maurer living in the city of Margilan who sent two male specimens for study to German regions in the 1880s, and the second was Grigory Grum-Grshimailo who traversed the mountains of the Pamir region in four expeditions between 1884 and 1889 and was able to collect a number of male specimens at high altitudes on remote mountain passes, always in the summer. It then remained unseen for almost a century, until Karel Černý managed to collect the first ever female in the early 1980s. Grum-Grshimailo states that it is found all over the vast region of the Pamirs in the same specific alpine habitats, but that in general it is very rarely encountered. References Moths described in 1887 Lymantriinae