False Mocha (Cyclophora porata)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Invertebrate > insect - moth > Moth |
| Red List Status: | (Not Relevant) [(not listed)(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Cyclophora porata |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (Linnaeus, 1767) |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | (not listed) |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | GB Red List (Fox et al. 2019): LC and no trend data available, but much declined in England and now rarely recorded except as single individuals at scattered sites. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | May require management intervention in oak woodlands. Also requires targeted survey / status review in order to progress conservation action. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Stated to prefer coppice regrowth and scrubby oaks, therefore may benefit from greater structural diversity in oak woodland. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 2. Biological status assessment exists |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Low - Combination or other (detail in comments) |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | Conservation of this species currently hindered by lack of knowledge of its requirements, and inability to locate breeding populations. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Currently no population trends are available due to insufficient data. Also, inability to locate any breeding populations is hampering efforts to understand the moth's autecology. The moth is confusable with other members of the genus and may be overlooked to some extent. Alert the moth recording community to the possibility of this species in light traps, by producing publicity materials to highlight identification features and possible confusion species.
Action targets: 2. Biological status assessment exists
Action type: Education/awareness raising
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: National
High priority sites:
Comments: Larvae can be sampled using a beating tray. Recording using this technique is likely to require some volunteer training. However larvae are almost impossible to distinguish from Clay triple-lines.
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.