Hecatera dysodea, the small ranunculus, is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is found in Europe, primarily in Central Europe and Southern Europe. The northern boundary of the distribution is from the Baltic Sea and the southern part of Lithuania, Belarus, south of Moscow to the Urals. North Africa forms the distribution border in the south east they extend to the Middle East, Turkestan and across the Palearctic to Central Asia. It is an introduced species in North America, where it was first found in Utah in 1998 and Oregon in 2005.