Alucitidae
EOL Text
Introduction:
Alucita adriendenisi The Alucitidae are a cosmopolitan family of about 130 species in a handful of genera (Dugdale et al. 1999), sometimes called the Many-plumed Moths. Most of the species are in the genus Alucita.
Alucita is very widespread, but its diversity, and that of the family as a whole, is greatest in the warm regions of the Old World.
http://www.leptree.net/Alucita_adriendenisi
Adult alucitids are delicate, small moths (wingspan 7-28mm; Common 1990) with broad wings that are divided to some degree into multiple lobes. They rest with wings spread out and appressed to the substrate. In Alucita and most other alucitids, the wingspan is typically less than 10mm, and the wings are deeply divided into separate "plumes", six plumes in the forewing and six or seven in the hindwing (Dugdale et al. 1999). In a few Old World tropical genera with larger adults, however, the divisions in the wings are fewer and less deep, as in these pictures of Triscaedecia septemdactyla and Hebdomactis crystallodes.
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Life habits of immature stages:
The larvae of Alucitidae typically bore into flowers, flower buds, fruits or shoots; some species live in galls. The boring habit is nicely illustrated by the larva of Alucita hexadactyla, which feeds on leaves and flowers of honeysuckle, often boring into and consuming the contents of the flower bud, as in this picture from ukmoths. Individual species appear to be host specific to the plant family at least, and nearly all host records are from the Eusasterid I clade (Jansen et al. 2007) of angiosperms (Dugdale et al. 1999).
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| Rights holder/Author | Leptree.net, Charles Mitter, LepTree |
| Source | http://www.leptree.net/lep_taxon_page?id=4657&scientificName=Alucitidae |
Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) Stats
Specimen Records:255
Specimens with Sequences:229
Specimens with Barcodes:216
Species:25
Species With Barcodes:24
Public Records:73
Public Species:18
Public BINs:29
Collection Sites: world map showing specimen collection locations for Alucitidae
The Alucitidae or many-plumed moths[1] are a family of moths with unusually modified wings. Both fore- and hind-wings consist of about six rigid spines, from which radiate flexible bristles creating a structure similar to a bird's feather.
This is a small family, with about a global total of 130 species described to date (though it is likely that some undescribed species remain to be discovered). They are found mostly in temperate to subtropical (but not tropical) regions. But they are rare even in parts of their core range; both in Great Britain and North America for example, only one species is found – the Twenty-plume Moth (Alucita hexadactyla) – and in the latter region, it is introduced. This smallish moth can often be found fluttering in the evening twilight or resting with its "wings" outstretched. Its larvae feed on honeysuckle (Lonicera). On the other hand, in Continental Europe a considerable number of species, mostly of the large genus Alucita, occur.
Systematics and taxonomy[edit]
The taxonomy of this family is somewhat disputed. Here, they are united in superfamily Alucitoidea with the Tineodidae, a diverse group of numerous small genera with about 20 species altogether. However, the two supposed Alucitoidea families may be polyphyletic with regard to each other, and Tineodidae better included in Alucitidae. In any case, the similar-looking plume moths (Pterophoroidea) are widely held to be very close, if not the closest living relatives of the Alucitoidea.[2]
Earlier, many authors assumed that the fruitworm moths (Copromorphoidea) were also very closely related to the Alucitidae (and the fringe-tufted moths, Epermeniidae) – according to some, closer in fact than the Pterophoroidea and even the Tineodidae. In this Alucitoidea do not exist; Alucitidae and Tineodidae are assigned to different (but still most closely related) superfamilies. In the treatment here, the Copromorphoidea are presumed to be the most advanced of these lineages of small but fairly "modern" moths, while the Alucitoidea and Pterophoroidea are more primitive.[3]
Genera[edit]
The genera presently placed here, sorted alphabetically, are:[4]
Footnotes[edit]
References[edit]
Data related to Alucitidae at Wikispecies. Version of 2010-AUG-10.- Minet, Joel (1991): Tentative reconstruction of the ditrysian phylogeny (Lepidoptera: Glossata). Entomologica Scandinavica 22(1): 69–95. doi:10.1163/187631291X00327 (HTML abstract)
- Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) (2003): Alucitoidea. Version of 2003-JAN-01. Retrieved 2011-SEP-24.
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| Rights holder/Author | Wikipedia |
| Source | http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Many-plumed_moth&oldid=584010718 |