Smaller than a grain of rice: a new moth in Okinawa puts a whole insect family on Japan's map

It would be easy to walk past Tinagma nigripunctum — the new moth species described from Itokazu in Nanjo, Okinawa, spans just 5.5 to 5.9 millimetres wingtip to wingtip. But size is not the story: this tiny moth is the first member of the family Douglasiidae ever recorded in Japan, and the first confirmed living member found anywhere in the Oriental region. Described in the journal Nota Lepidopterologica, with specimens kept at Kyushu University, it differs from its nearest relative by a clear 9.7% in its DNA barcode — a whole branch of the insect family tree, hiding in plain sight on a Japanese island.