Subfamily Geometrinae Stephens, 1829

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Subfamily Geometrinae Stephens, 1829

Geometrinae Stephens, J.F. 1829. The Nomenclature of British Insects; together with their synonyms: being a compendious list of such species as are contained in the systematic catalogue of British insects, and of those discovered subsequently to its publication; forming a guide to their classification, etc. London : Baldwin & Craddock 68 pp.

Introduction

The Australian Geometrinae were revised by Meyrick (1888b) and the world fauna was treated in Genera Insectorum by L.B. Prout (1912a), in Lepidopterorum Catalogus by L.B. Prout (1913a) and the Indoaustralian fauna in Seitz's Macrolepidoptera of the World by L.B. Prout (1921-1934). The Australian species were revised by Turner (1910).

As many as eighteen tribes have been proposed by various authors for the Geometrinae (Inoue 1961), (Ferguson 1969, 1985) and (Viidalepp 1981) (see Forum Herbulot 2003 for a summary). This checklist previously followed the conservative approach suggested by Holloway (1996) in which the sub-family is split into the monogeneric Dysphanini and most of the remainder into the Geometrini, as the Australian fauna were not sufficiently well-known in many cases to confidently assign to alternative tribal systems. However the Geometrinae fall also into two natural groupings: a group of stout bodied species, often grey or grey-green in colour (Pseuodoterpnini), and a group of fragile moths, called emeralds overseas, which are slender and usually bright green. The slender emeralds have not been comprehensively revised on an Australian basis since Turner (1910), and Prout (1921-1934) is the most recent review.

However, progress has recently been made in the classification of the subfamily at the tribal level using both molecular and morphological characters, and with several Australian taxa. Murillo-Ramos et al. (2019) established the subfamily as monophyletic with Eumelea as the sister taxon to the subfamily. Tribal classificaiton is still somewhat problematic in the Geometrinae, but several taxonomic changes at this level are well-supported by both Ban et al. (2018) and Murillo-Ramos et al. 2019. The monogeneric tribes Agathiini plus Ornithospilini are sister to the rest of the Geometrinae. Aracimini, Neohipparchini, Timandromorphini, Geometrini and Comibaenini were all recovered as monophyletic groups but Synchlorini were found to lie within the Nemoriini (neither tribe occurs in Australia). The tribal placement of Eucyclodes remaines in doubt as it was not recovered within a tribe but as sister to the Nemoriini; however Australian species of this genus were not included in this study. The Australian taxa treated by these analyses have been reclassified accordingly; those that have not have been left under the Geometrini.

The Pseudoterpnini have now been raised to tribal status having previouly been treated previously in the checklist as a sub-tribe of the Geometrini. The Pseudoterpnini were revised by Goldfinch (1929) in a comprehensive illustrated paper and more recently by Pitkin et al. (2007) . Ban et al. (2018) found that Pseudoterpna and Pingasa form a monophyletic group, separate from a well-supported clade of the other pseudoterpnines (sensu Pitkin) included in the analysis; the latter clade, named Pseudoterpnini s. l. did not include any of the four genera formerly associated with the type genus by Pitkin, Pseudoterpnini s. str.(see above). Similar relationships, with broader sampling of taxa and genera, were recovered by Murillo-Ramos et al. (2019) who revived the Archaeobalbini for the group, dubbed Pseudoterpnini s. l. by Ban et al. This tribe does not include Australian taxa.

Interestingly, Murillo-Ramos et al. recovered the common and widespread Australian pseudoterpnine Crypsiphona as an isolated and separate lineage, sister to Hemetheini. As few Australian genera have been included in this recent work and the classification of these tribes is still inconclusive, more work needs to be conducted to arrive at a stable taxonomy for the Australian 'pseudoterpnines'. Most of the Pseudoterpnini belong to endemic genera and there are a few endemic genera in the emeralds, but in both groups some genera are shared with New Guinea (McQuillan & Edwards 1996).