Family URANIIDAE

uraniidae

© Copyright CSIRO Entomology.

Museums

Regional Maps

Introduction

[After Edwards 1996: 230]
This is a small family with two subfamilies, the Uraniiniae containing about 10 Australian species, and the Epipleminae with about 23 species. In the past these were frequently regarded as separate families but Turner (1911) and Minet (1983) treated them as subfamilies. Another group, the Microniinae, were treated as a separate subfamily by Minet (1983) and by Common (1990) but were included within the Uraniinae by Scoble (1992). Minet (1983, 1986) placed the Uraniidae in the superfamily Uranioidea.

The Australian Uraniinae were revised by Turner (1911) with some notes added by Turner (1922c) and on a wider basis some were revised by Westwood (1879) and in Lepidopterorum Catalogus by Dalla Torre (1924) and in Seitz's Macrolepidoptera of the World by Seitz (1929) and Gaede (1929). The Australian Epipleminae were revised by Turner (1911) with further notes in Turner (1922c) and on a wider basis in Lepidopterorum Catalogus by Dalla Torre (1924) and in Seitz's Macrolepidoptera of the World by Gaede (1929-30a).

The genus Lyssa Hübner was revised by Altena (1953) but other genera have not been recently revised. A broad review of the Uraniinae was published by Lees and Smith (1991) with particular interest in foodplant relationships. The foodplants of some Australian Uraniinae were reported by Coleman and Monteith (1981) and Monteith and Wood (1987).

Most Australian species in the family occur in the northern rainforests but a few Epipleminae are found in N.S.W. and only Lobogethes interrupta Warren inhabits arid areas.

History of changes