Tribe Araeopteronini Fibiger, 2005

Araeopteroninae Fibiger, 2005, Esperiana 11: 25 (in Fibiger and Lafontaine 2005). Type genus Araeopteron Hampson, 1893. Lafontaine and Fibiger 2006; Kononenko 2005, 2010; Fibiger and Kononenko 2008; Holloway 2009.

Araeopteronini: Holloway 2011; Zahiri et al. 2012; Kononenko and Pinratana 2013; Kononenko 2016; Wu et al. 2020.

Remarks.

The tribe comprises rather uniform and small or very small moths with quadrifine hindwing venation. The most conspicuous autapomorphic character states defining the Araeopteronini are: in external appearance, their small size, and the shape of the wings with a long, narrow, pointed forewing and short, rounded, triangular hindwing; in the male genitalia, the shape of the tegumen, hugely developed paratergal sclerites, the structure of the valve and the articulation of uncus; and in the female genitalia the patch between the ovipositor lobes on the ventral side and the shape of the signum in the corpus bursae (e.g., Fibiger and Hacker 2001; Fibiger and Lafontaine 2005; Fibiger and Kononenko 2008; Holloway 2009).

Araeopteronini is a poorly studied and neglected group of Erebidae moths. At present, the tribe Araeopterinini includes the Old World genus Araeopteron with many undescribed species and some other tropical genera belonging to the Boletobiinae ( Hyriodes Hampson, 1910, Pseudcraspedia Hampson, 1889, and Niaccaba Walker, 1895) (Holloway 2009, 2011; Kononenko and Pinratana 2013).