| Diptychophora galvani | |
|---|---|
| |
| The holotype, a female imago | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Crambidae |
| Genus: | Diptychophora |
| Species: | D. galvani
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| Binomial name | |
| Diptychophora galvani Landry & Becker, 2021
| |
Diptychophora galvani is a species of moth in the family Crambidae. It measures about one centimeter in wingspan and is easily distinguished from all closely related species by the color pattern of its forewings. These are orange at their base and tip with a large intermediate gray patch, a pattern not found in any other species of Diptychophora. The female has grayish hindwings, while they are entirely white in the male. The genitalia of both male and female are also quite different from other members of this genus. The biology of the species remains completely unknown, including the host plant of the larval stage, although some species of the tribe Diptychophorini are known to feed on mosses.
Diptychophora galvani is known only from Brazil, where it was collected in the states of Mato Grosso and Minas Gerais, at 700–800 m (2,300–2,600 ft) altitude. There it inhabits the Cerrado ecoregion, consisting of gallery forests and savannahs, with a dry season. It was collected for the first time in 1982 by Vitor O. Becker, but its description by Bernard Landry and Becker was published only in 2021. Its specific epithet, galvani, pays tribute to Ricardo Galvão, a Brazilian physicist who headed the National Institute for Space Research of Brazil and was dismissed in 2019 for publicly opposing the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a notorious climate change denier. The latter had claimed that data produced by the institute demonstrating the substantial increase in Amazonian forest deforestation following his rise to power, including devastating fires in 2019, were false. The descriptors of the species dedicate the species to Galvão for "his courage in the face of professional adversity", but also because the color of the butterfly's wings recalls that of forest fires. The moth is named "species of the year 2022 of the Swiss Systematics Society".