I want to start today with a visual, if you're
listening. Just picture your standard, run -of
-the -mill, scientific database entry. Whoa,
yeah. Like the really clean ones. Right. Usually
it's so clean, it's authoritative. You've got
the kingdom, the phylum, the genus, the species,
the author, the year. All lined up perfectly.
Exactly. It is the absolute bedrock of how we
humans organize nature. It's basically the filing
system for the entire planet. It is. But today...
For this deep dive, we are looking at a file
that has been heavily blatantly flagged. We're
diving into the story of a moth that is currently
sitting in what you might call a taxonomic penalty
box. A very dusty penalty box. Very dusty. Because
the title of our source material today, it isn't
just a scientific name. It reads like a subtle
accusation. The title is Hocoseroids, but the
Junis name is, in scare quotes, Scythrella. Which
is just fantastic. I mean, you almost never see
sarcasm in a biological database. No, you really
don't. But those quotation marks, they're doing
some incredibly heavy lifting here. They really
are. It's like the database administrators are
just rolling their eyes and saying, allegedly
this thing is a holococeroids. Allegedly, yeah.
So our mission today for you guys listening is
to unpack this specific tiny creature, holococeroids
cithrella. We want to figure out why it's generating
so much bureaucratic drama despite being, honestly,
by all accounts, a total ghost. Yeah, ghost is
absolutely the right word for it. In the field,
we probably call this a data void or a dark taxon.
A dark taxon. That sounds so sinister. It does,
but it really just means this is a creature that
exists more as a database entry than as a biological
reality for most of the working scientific world
today. And the source material itself is actually
brutally honest about this fact. It's a Wikipedia
article, yes. But it is self -classified right
at the top as a stub. The classic Wikipedia stub.
Right. It admits immediately that it relies largely
or entirely on a single source. And when you
look at the metadata, the edit history, the last
human hand to even touch this page was really
recently. It was February 4, 2026. Oh, wow. Yeah.
But even that edit, it didn't add any actual
new biological data to the page. Right. It probably
just polished the existing metadata or tweaked
a category. Precisely. Just moving the furniture
around in an empty room. So what we have is a
name, in scare quotes, a single source, and a
habitat listed quite literally as just Russia.
Which is, I mean, not helpful. Not helpful at
all. That's it. That's the whole tweet, basically.
Well, let's let's zoom out before we zoom in
here, because even with that tiny, incredibly
frustrating amount of info, we can actually reconstruct
a pretty decent profile of this thing just based
on who its family is. OK, right. Let's skip the
kingdom and phylum stuff. I mean, we know it's
animalia. We know it's arthropoda, class insecta,
orderlipidoptera. We know it's a moth. Right.
Let's get to the good stuff. The taxonomy places
it firmly in the family blastobacidae. Blastobacidae.
Yeah. And this is where the story gets a bit
gritty. Because these aren't your, you know,
showy, charismatic butterflies, you aren't going
to see Haltisroids sithrella on a Hallmark greeting
card anytime soon. These are the microlipidopteras,
right? The sort of... The little brown moths.
Exactly. Blastobasids are generally small, they're
drab, they're obscure. But ecologically, they
are actually fascinating. They function as the
cleanup crew of the undergrowth. Oh, so they
eat trash? Pretty much. Organic trash, yes. Most
of the larvae in this family are detritivores.
They eat dead leaves, decaying plant matter.
Sometimes they even scavenge the leftovers inside
other insects' nests. Wow. Yeah, they're scavengers.
They have these specialized, often kind of flattened
bodies so they can scuttle into tight crevices.
So when we try to picture... This scare quote
moth, this holococeroid sithrella somewhere in
Russia. We shouldn't be picturing it gracefully
fluttering over a sunlit meadow. Definitely not.
You should picture it scurrying through the damp
leaf litter, just doing the dirty work of the
ecosystem. Which honestly might explain why nobody
has seen it, or at least why nobody's bothered
to record it since the 1980s. It's not exactly
begging for human attention. Not at all. And
there's another layer to the blastobacidae family
that makes this whole situation incredibly tricky.
They are notoriously difficult to tell apart.
Like morphologically, they all look the same.
Yes. You can have two totally different species
of blastobacids that look absolutely identical
to the naked eye. The scales are the exact same
dusty brown. The wingspan is the exact same few
millimeters. So how do you tell them apart? Well,
usually to tell them apart, you have to perform
a dissection. Oh. We're talking about genitalia
dissection here, aren't we? We are indeed. It
is the absolute gold standard for identifying
microlepidoptera. You have to look at the genital
structures under a microscope to differentiate
the species. Okay, so just for Holococeroid cithrella
to even exist as a species concept in our records,
someone specifically, a researcher named Senev,
according to the source, had to have caught a
physical specimen. He had to have dissected it,
looked in a microscope and realized, hey, this
internal structure doesn't match anything else
in the catalog. Exactly. And that leads us perfectly
right into the core controversy because Sinev
did exactly that. He did the work. He did. The
source material attributes the specific name
to Sinev, 1986. So picture it. Back in 1986,
somewhere in the Soviet Union, Sinev finds this
obscure little moth. He dissects it. He decides,
yep, it's unique. And he names it. Hulkoceroids.
Which, as far as scientific names go, it's a
perfectly good name. It sounds descriptive. It
does. It sounds very official. But then we hit
the brick wall. The source text has this cryptic
little notation right next to the name. It says,
Leucocereid Sinov, 1986, non -strand, 1913. Non
-strand. That is the killer right there. Oh,
yeah. Because this is where we have to sort of
put on our lawyer wigs for a second. This isn't
actually a biological problem anymore. This is
a legal problem, specifically within the International
Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the ICZN. Right.
The ICZN. So going back to that notation. In
1913, a totally different researcher named Strand
used the name holocaustoroids. Exactly. Strand
published the name holocaustoroids way back in
1913, likely for a completely different group
of insects. Or perhaps it was a very similar
name that created what we call a homonym conflict.
Right. So when Sinov came along 73 years later
in 1986, he either didn't know about Strand's
paper or maybe he just made a mistake in the
spelling check. But he named his new Russian
moth... Hococeroids. He basically claimed a plot
of land that was already deeded to someone else
decades ago. Precisely. And in taxonomy, you
absolutely cannot have two genera with the exact
same name. It creates total chaos in the filing
system. You wouldn't know which creature someone
was talking about. So Sinev's name, holcuseroids,
is technically what we call a junior homonym.
Meaning it's invalid. Yes. It's invalid the literal
moment it gets published. Which explains the
scare quotes in the title. The database is effectively
saying, look, we are calling it this because
that's what Sinev called it, but we know it's
illegal. It's a zombie name. It's walking around
in the literature, but it's... Technically dead.
I do want to pause on the date for a second,
though. Yeah. 1986. Sinev was working in the
Soviet Union. Information exchange back then
wasn't exactly fluid. That is a crucial piece
of context. It really is. In 1986, you couldn't
just hop on the Internet and search a global
biodiversity database to see if the name holococeroids
was taken. There was no Google Scholar. No. You
had to rely on physical card catalogs, printed
bound volumes of the zoological record, and whatever
physical library resources you happen to have
in your specific institution. So it's very, very
possible that CNEF, working in the USSR, simply
didn't have access to Strand's 1913 paper. I
mean, that could have been published. in some
obscure German or British journal decades prior?
It's highly probable. I mean, this happens way
more often than people think, especially in that
pre -digital era. We call it taxonomic inertia.
The name gets published. It enters the literature.
Other people might even use it. And only much
later does someone finally connect the dots and
realize, wait a minute, Strand already used this
exact word. And the source material actually
does offer a solution to this mess. Right. Or,
well, at least a proposed solution. It lists
a synonym. Right. Tecmerium cithrella. Yes, tecmerium.
Now, tecmerium is a valid, legally established
genus within the blastobacidae family. So someone,
maybe a later reviser looking through the records,
saw... the huge mess Sinev made and said, OK,
Hulkoceroids is a bust. It's illegal. Let's just
move this species into the genus Techmerion.
That's the logical fix. In the field, it's called
recombination. You keep the species name, Cithrella,
because Sinev was entirely right about it being
a brand new species. But you move it into a genus
that actually exists legally. But here is the
rub. Here's why this is so weird. The article
we're looking at is still titled Hulkoceroids.
It has been fully moved. We're in this weird
bureaucratic limbo where the database explicitly
acknowledges the synonym Techmerium, but it still
categorizes the main entry under the illegal
controversial name. Which suggests the scientific
community hasn't reached a full consensus. Or
honestly, more likely, nobody has cared quite
enough to publish a formal paper cementing the
move. Right. See, you can't just change a Wikipedia
title for a species and hope for the best. Usually
you need a published peer -reviewed study confirming
the taxonomic transfer. So someone literally
needs to write a paper saying... We formally
propose that H. scytherella be transferred to
Techmerium. Exactly. And until someone writes
that specific paper, or until the high -level
database administrators decide the existing evidence
is strong enough to force the change, scytherella
is stuck wearing the wrong name tag. It's fascinating,
really, that the category at the very bottom
of the Wikipedia page is explicitly controversial
taxer. It makes it sound so dramatic, like, oh,
this moth has scandalous opinions on foreign
policy. Ah, right. It sounds like a tabloid headline.
But in taxonomy, controversial is really just
code for unresolved paperwork. It means the system
is working. It caught the error, but the gears
are jammed. OK, let's pivot and talk about the
data void itself because the source material
is wild. We mentioned earlier this is a stub
and the warning banners on this page are intense.
It has that big box that says this article relies
largely or entirely on a single source, which
is the academic equivalent of a huge danger.
Thin ice sign. Yeah. And when you actually check
the reference list at the bottom, there is literally
one item. Right. One, it's a link to www .lackett
.funit .fi. Ah, FUNIT. Oh, you know it. Oh, absolutely.
Any entomologist would. It's a legendary resource.
It's a server hosted by the University of Helsinki
in Finland. For decades, it has been one of the
absolute most comprehensive, fan -maintained,
researcher -maintained databases of Lepidoptera
on the Internet. Okay, but here is where it gets
a little spooky for our moth. The reference details
in our source explicitly say archived March 4,
2016, and then the retrieval date is listed as
July 13, 2025. Wow. Okay, so we are referencing
a snapshot of a finished server from 10 years
ago. Right. The live link might not even show
this moth anymore, or maybe the hierarchy changed
on the live site. We are relying entirely on
the Wayback Machine version of reality to prove
this thing exists. And if that archive link breaks.
Which they do. Yeah, they do. If it breaks, then
the primary digital tether for hulcus roids,
Zithrella, just snaps. This is what we call link
rot. And it's actually a huge threat to modern
biodiversity data. We describe species, we put
them online, and then the server maintenance
funding runs out. It really highlights the stark
difference between data and knowledge. Because
we have the data here, sure. We have the name,
the year, the family. But do we actually have
knowledge? Don't know what this moth looks like.
I don't know if it eats birch leaves or oak leaves.
I don't know if it's critically endangered or
everywhere. We don't even know where in Russia
it is. Exactly. I mean, Russia is the largest
country on Earth. It spans the entire Palearctic
ecozone. Is this moth hanging out in the forests
of Karelia near Finland? Is it out in the steppes?
Is it way out in the Far East near Vladivostok?
Saying it lives in Russia is about as helpful
as saying it lives on Earth. Basically. And since
we know the genus is monotypic. Meaning Hulcus
roids contains only this one single species.
It's a lonely genus. Exactly. Because it's monotypic,
we can't even look at its evolutionary neighbors
to guess where it lives. Like if there were a
Hulcus roids Germanica or a Japonica, we could
maybe triangulate the habitat. But Sithrella
is a total orphan. But in here is the but that
kind of keeps me up at night looking at this.
It is in the system. Beyond just Wikipedia, I
looked at the taxon identifiers at the bottom
of the page. It has a Wikidata Q number, Q13861539.
Right. It has a GBIF ID, 5122282. It has an IRMN
GIZ, 10735052. Those are the digital barcodes?
GBIF, for instance, is the Global Biodiversity
Information Facility. The fact that it has a
number there means it has been officially ingested
by the global aggregate. So it's a verified number
in a giant spreadsheet somewhere. Yes. But that
number is really just the placeholder. It's like
a reservation at the restaurant of science waiting
for the actual guests to show up. Those IDs are
crucial, though, because they allow computers
to talk to each other. Through APIs and stuff.
Exactly. Even if we humans don't know much about
it, the algorithms know that 5122282 is a valid
entity that needs to be tracked across datasets.
It feels like digital archaeology. We're brushing
away the dirt from these identifiers just to
see what's underneath. And often what's underneath
is a physical specimen sitting quietly in a drawer.
That's the part we forget in all this digital
talk. We get so caught up in the digital... Wikipedia
stub, the broken links, the IDs, that we forget
there is a physical reality to this. Somewhere.
Somewhere. Likely in the Zoological Institute
in St. Petersburg, there is a pin. And on that
pin is a small brown faded moth. And on the label,
written in Sina's actual handwriting, it says
Hulcus sword Cithrella. That physical specimen
is the... anchor for all of this? It is the holotype,
the single physical specimen that definitively
defines the reality of the species. As long as
that moth exists in that drawer, the species
is real, regardless of what the internet says
or what link breaks. But if nobody goes to that
drawer, I mean, if nobody opens it for 40 years...
Then it enters a state of dormancy. It's part
of what we call the Linnean shortfall. It's the
massive gap between what actually lives on Earth
and what we have formally described and understood.
Most of life on Earth is stuck in that gap. Honestly,
holcostroid cithrella is actually lucky. Lucky?
How? At least it has a name, even if it's a disputed
illegal name. Most species out there don't even
have that. That's a sobering thought. We're picking
apart this stub because it's so incomplete, but
it's actually ahead of the curve compared to
the literal millions of unnamed beetles and nematodes
just crawling around out there. Exactly. It has
a foot in the door. Let's talk about the blastobacidae
stubs category. The source actually mentions
this specific category at the bottom, and there's
a huge banner begging for help. It says, find
sources in news, newspapers, books, scholar,
JS tour. It implies there are hundreds of these
empty pages. Oh, thousands. If you go to the
Wikipedia category for, say, moths described
in 1986, you will find endless stubs just like
this one. And this is really where the listener
comes in. The source explicitly says you can
help Wikipedia by adding missing information.
But how? I mean, if I'm a listener right now
and I want to save Hulka Soroyd's Scythrella
from total obscurity, I can't just make stuff
up. No, please don't do that. You have to do
what we call literature mining. You would have
to find access to those original Russian entomological
journals from the 1980s. It sounds hard. It is.
You'd need to translate Senev's original description.
You'd need to see if he described the wing venation
or the genitalia or the exact forest he found
it in. You'd have to be a detective. You'd have
to be a citizen scientist. That is literally
how these databases grow. It is rarely one genius
writing everything from scratch. It's thousands
of regular people finding one specific paper,
translating one specific paragraph, and updating
one specific stub. So really, this deep dive
we're doing, it isn't just about a tiny brown
moth. It's about the entire infrastructure of
human truth. That's a very big way to put it,
but yes. Yeah. Absolutely. But think about it.
We have a naming conflict from 1913, an honest
mistake from 1986, a digital archive snapshot
from 2016. and a user retrieval in 2025. This
one tiny, seemingly empty page compresses over
a hundred years of human effort just trying to
categorize the world. And it beautifully shows
the friction in that effort, the friction between
different languages, between political eras,
between paper records and digital databases.
Hulkes -Royd's Scytherella is just caught in
the gears of that massive machine. So let's try
to synthesize this for the listener. If you're
at a dinner party, a very, very nerdy dinner
party, and you want to explain this moth to someone,
what's the elevator pitch? The pitch is this.
Holkos writes that Thrella is a tiny Russian
moth that technically shouldn't exist by its
current name. It belongs to a family of obscure
scavengers, the blastobacidae, which are notoriously
hard to identify anyway. It was named during
the late Soviet era, but the name was already
taken by a researcher from 1913, making it a
legal outlaw in the eyes of scientific nomenclature.
I love that. A legal outlaw. And today, It survives
mostly as a digital ghost anchored by a single
valid synonym, Techmerium, and a fragile link
to a Finnish server that is slowly gathering
digital dust. That is the tragedy and honestly
the beauty of it. It is a biological creature
defined almost entirely by its bureaucratic baggage.
Defined by bureaucratic baggage? I mean, aren't
we all? Huh. To some extent, yeah. But it raises
a really... provocative question about existence
i think we usually think something exists if
we can see it or touch it right but in the realm
of science something only really exists if it's
properly filed if it's not in the index it's
not in the library right And Hulk Osroyd's Scythrella
is currently misfiled. It's sitting on the returns
cart. Just waiting for a librarian to pick it
up, dust it off, and walk it over to the techmerium
shelf. Which might not happen for another 40
years. Or it might happen tomorrow if the right
person listens to this and decides to go dig
up Sinov's old paper. That's the call to action
then. We need a hero for the microlepidoptera.
We always do. So here's the thought I want to
leave you with today. We live in a modern world
where we expect instant perfect answers. You
type a question into your phone, you get a clean
summary. But the edges of human knowledge are
so much rougher than we think. Holcoceroid Sithrella
represents the fraying edge of the map. It's
the here be dragons part of the map. Or in this
case, here be disputed moths. Exactly. It's a
reminder that the encyclopedia of life isn't
finished. It is a very rough draft. And some
of the pages are still stuck together. And some
are just written in tensile. And some have scare
quotes around the title. Precisely. Thanks for
diving into the void with us today. It's dark
down here, but the moths are definitely interesting.
Always a pleasure to be here. Keep checking your
citations, everyone. You never know when a name
might be a lie. See you next time.