Light-sensitive-pigment
Guides
Hemithea aestivaria
Common Emerald
Hemithea aestivaria, the Common Emerald, is a geometrid moth native to Eurasia and accidentally introduced to North America. Its blue-green wing coloration derives from the pigment geoverdin, which is light-sensitive and fades in both living individuals and dried specimens. The species has been sequenced with a 501.7 Mb genome assembly containing 31 chromosomal pseudomolecules and 18,477 protein-coding genes. In its native range it is univoltine, while introduced populations in Japan have been observed to be bivoltine.