Family ELACHISTIDAE

elachistidae

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Family ELACHISTIDAE

Compiler and date details

February 2023 - C. Byrne, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

March 2012 - You Ning Su with advice from Ted Edwards, Australian National Insect Collection, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Canberra

Cycnodiidae.

Introduction

[Modified after Nielsen (1996)].
The family in North Europe was revised by Traugott-Olsen & Nielsen (1977), North America by Braun (1948) and some New Zealand species were reported by Dugdale (1971). Nielsen (1996) listed three genera, and six species. The numbers in 2012, following Kaila's (2011) revision, are now six genera, including 146 species.

The earlier-named Australian species of Elachistidae were mostly described by Meyrick (1897) in the genus Elachista Treitschke and several were named by Turner (1923). Approximately 30 Australian species were estimated by Nielsen & Common (1991) with the majority occurring in southern temperate Australia, the 146 species listed here greatly exceed this number. The genera Elachista Treitschke and Cosmiotes Clemens both occur in Australia with species of Cosmiotes Clemens being locally common and occasionally causing minor damage to wheat. The genus Diacasteris Meyrick has been placed as a synonym of Elachista.

The larvae of most Elachistidae mine in the leaves of monocotyledons.

Of a number of names unplaced by Nielsen (1996) the following are still unplaced to genus:

Elachista arctodyta Meyrick, E. (1897). Descriptions of Australian Microlepidoptera. XVII. Elachistidae. Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W. 22: 297-435 [336].
Elachista argopis Meyrick, E. (1897). Descriptions of Australian Microlepidoptera. XVII. Elachistidae. Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W. 22: 297-435 [337].
Elachista cataptila Meyrick, E. (1897). Descriptions of Australian Microlepidoptera. XVII. Elachistidae. Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W. 22: 297-435 [333].
Elachista demogenes Meyrick, E. (1897). Descriptions of Australian Microlepidoptera. XVII. Elachistidae. Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W. 22: 297-435 [336].
Elachista metallifera Lower, O.B. (1908). New Australian Lepidoptera. — No. XXV. Trans. R. Soc. S. Aust. 32: 110-120.

The concept of the family Elachistidae was greatly expanded by Hodges (1998), "Elachistidae s.l.", to seven subfamilies, retaining the core Elachistinae, and including the following genus groups, formerly classifed under Oecophoridae: Stenomata, Depressaria, Hypertropha and Deuterogonia. He also included the families Ethmiidae and Agonoxenidae. Lvovsky (2011) supported this classification on the basis of shared pupal characters.

More recent papers have disputed the relationships of Elachistidae s. l. and reduced the family to three subfamilies, Elachistinae, Agonoxeninae and Parametriotinae (Kaila et al. 2011, Heikkila et al. 2014, Sohn et al. 2016, Wang and Li 2020).