Palaephatidae

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Palaephatidae
Systematics
Class : Insects (Insecta)
Order : Butterflies (Lepidoptera)
Subordination : Glossata
Partial order : Heteroneura
Superfamily : Palaephatoidea
Family : Palaephatidae
Scientific name of the  superfamily
Palaephatoidea
Davis , 1986
Scientific name of the  family
Palaephatidae
Davis , 1986

The Palaephatidae are a family of butterflies . They live with a few species in South America and Australia.

features

Palaephatidae are small butterflies with a wingspan between 8 and 36 millimeters, with elongated, narrow wings (exception: genus Azaleodes with broad wings). The head has protruding scales, chaetosemata are absent, ocelles only occur in one genus ( sesommata ). The thread-like antennae reach about half the length to almost the length of the forewings. Mandibles are present (primeval, plesiomorphic feature in butterflies), but rudimentary and not functional. There is also a proboscis , it is short but functional. The long maxillary palps are five-, rarely four-segmented, the labial palps three-segmented, these are carried in life slightly curved upwards. The anterior tibia has no spurs on the running legs of the thorax, the middle tibia two, and the rear tibia four. The wings are usually elongated, oval, somewhat pointed, the hind wings just as wide or a little wider than the forewings and always more than twice as long as wide. The coupling mechanism of the frenulum and retinaculum is present and functional; the frenulum consists of one bristle in the male and two to four bristles in the female. The wings are scaled and also covered with small hairs (microtricha), the males of some genera have specialized scented scales on the wings, which are sometimes hidden in pockets, in these cases the wing veining is modified. In the front wing, the veining almost corresponds to the basic plan and is hardly reduced, the radius is five-branched, the media three-branched. The two anal veins fuse towards the tip and form a fork. The abdomen has open spiracles on the first seven segments, and a rudimentary pair of spirals is present on the eighth segment. The male's aedeagus is extremely variable between the genera. In the resting position, the moths sit with their wings folded like a roof over their abdomen.

Almost nothing is known about the family's caterpillars and pupae; caterpillars of only two species have so far been found. They have abdominal legs on abdominal segments three to six. These have hook wreaths, the arrangement of which is in a ring shape, not completely closed in a circle.

Way of life

The way of life of most of the species is unknown, they are almost only known from catches on light traps or strip-net catches . All Australian species have been caught in or near rainforests. The South American species live in cool, moist Nothofagus forests, especially in the southern chains of the Andes. Caterpillars of the Sesommata holocapna living in Argentina have been observed on branches of the Diostea juncea ( Verbenaceae ) shrub , where they spin branches together with silk, and it may also eat dead leaves. The Australian Ptyssoptera tryphera lives on branches of Persoonia levis ( Proteaceae ), where it also spins leaves together to form a hiding place.

Phylogeny and Systematics

Five genera have been described from South America and two from Australia, the genera Azalaeodes and Ptyssoptera . A total of 57 species have been described so far (as of 2011).

The Palaephatidae are morphologically isolated within the butterflies, so that they are placed in their own (monotypical) superfamily Palaephatoidea. According to morphological criteria, their sister group is the crested-forehead moth family (Tischeriidae, Tischerioidea), or Nepticuloidea and Tischerioidea taken together. Such a grouping appears to be possible according to molecular family trees (based on homologous DNA sequences), but the database is not yet sufficient for a reliable determination of the relationships.

swell

  • Donald R. Davis (1986): A New Family of Monotrysian Moths from Austral South America (Lepidoptera: Palaephatidae), with a Phylogenetic Review of the Monotrysia. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology Number 454.
  • Ian Francis Bell Common: Moths of Australia. Brill Scientific Publishers, 1990. ISBN 978-90-04-09227-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David J. Carter & Niels P. Kristensen: Key to Larvae. In: Niels P. Kristensen: Handbuch der Zoologie / Handbook of zoology. Volume 4, Part 35 Lepidoptera. Walter de Gruyter Verlag 1999 ISBN 3110157047 . 530 pages
  2. ↑ Erik J. van Nieukerken, Lauri Kaila, Ian J. Kitching, Niels P. Kristensen, David C. Lees, Joël Minet, Charles Mitter, Marko Mutanen, Jerome C. Regier, Thomas J. Simonsen, Niklas Wahlberg, Shen-Horn Yen, Reza Zahiri, David Adamski, Joaquin Baixeras, Daniel Bartsch, Bengt Å. Bengtsson, John W. Brown, Sibyl Rae Bucheli, Donald R. Davis, Jurate De Prins, Willy De Prins, Marc E. Epstein, Patricia Gentili-Poole, Cees Gielis, Peter Hättenschwiler, Axel Hausmann, Jeremy D. Holloway, Axel Kallies , Ole Karsholt, Akito Y. Kawahara, Sjaak (JC) Koster, Mikhail V. Kozlov, J. Donald Lafontaine, Gerardo Lamas, Jean-François Landry, Sangmi Lee, Matthias Nuss, Kyu-Tek Park, Carla Penz, Jadranka Rota, Alexander Schintlmeister, B. Christian Schmidt, Jae-Cheon Sohn, M. Alma Solis, Gerhard M. Tarmann, Andrew D. Warren, Susan Weller, Roman V. Yakovlev, Vadim V. Zolotuhin, Andreas Zwick (2011): Order Lepidoptera Linnaeus , 1758. In: Zhang, Z.-Q. (Editor) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness. Zootaxa 3148: 212-221.
  3. ↑ Jerome C. Regier, Charles Mitter, Andreas Zwick, Adam L. Bazinet, Michael P. Cummings, Akito Y. Kawahara, Jae-Cheon Sohn, Derrick J. Zwick, Soowon Cho, Donald R. Davis, Joaquin Baixeras, John Brown , Cynthia Parr, Susan Weller, David C. Lees, Kim T. Mitter (2013): A Large-Scale, Higher-Level, Molecular Phylogenetic Study of the Insect Order Lepidoptera (Moths and Butterflies). PLoS ONE 8 (3): e58568. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0058568
  4. ^ Brian M. Wiegmann, Jerome C. Regier, Charles Mitter (2002): Combined molecular and morphological evidence on the phylogeny of the earliest lepidopteran lineages. Zoologica Scripta 31: 67-81. doi: 10.1046 / j.0300-3256.2001.00091.x