Coelopoetinae, Hodges, 1978

Kaila, Lauri, 2024, A review of Coelopoetinae (Lepidoptera, Gelechioidea, Pterolonchidae), a moth subfamily confined to western North America, with descriptions of seven new species, Zootaxa 5458 (3), pp. 361-384 : 365-366

Coelopoetinae ( Pterolonchidae )

Diagnosis. Members of Coelopoetinae are small-sized, with wingspans of 7.5–13 mm. They share a ubiquitous character of Gelechioidea , i.e. the basally scaled haustellum. The lack of tympanal organs differentiates them from Pyraloidea. The placement of Coelopoetinae as belonging to Gelechioidea is also confirmed by molecular studies (see Introduction). In the majority of gelechioid taxa, the adult moths have long and upcurved labial palpi. In Coelopoetinae , however, the labial palpi are relatively short (usually shorter than diameter of head), often porrect, or the second segment is only weakly ascending and not significantly longer than the third segment ( Figs. 2, 3 ).

The head is smooth-scaled; the antenna is about 3/4 as long as the forewing, the scape bears a pecten, the pedicel is reduced and hardly visible, the flagellum is not ciliate, in the male sometimes at least partly weakly serrate, usually in the distal third, and is often annulated with distinct white and dark-grey rings ( Figs. 2, 3 ). The forewing is usually rather narrow and the hindwing is lanceolate, narrower than its fringe scales. The forewing ground colour is usually unicolourous white to brown or occasionally grey; in several species there is a pale spot of varying shape and distinctiveness at about distal 3/5 of the dorsal margin; sometimes darker scales are scattered over the wing or condensed to form an indistinct patch in the middle of it in species/specimens with pale wing colour. Venation is as follows in C. glutinosi (no species of the C. fissurina species group examined): forewing R 1 –R 5 present, directed costad of apex, R 5 stalked with M 1, M 1 –M 3 and CuA 1 – 2 present, all separate and directed ventrad of apex. Hindwing R S with a costal-directed vein in slide USNM 10.738, but not in Pl. 1, Fig. 1 . in Braun (1948), nor in slide 10.737 (both wing slides examined); RS+M1 stalked, either separate from or fused with M2+M3; CuA1 and CuA2 present, separate from M veins. Regarding venation, see also Remarks below. The tergal segments of the abdomen have conspicuous transverse bands of spines ( Fig. 4 ). The male genitalia are capsule-shaped; the uncus is distinctive, either bilobed or undivided and hook-shaped; the gnathos is articulated from the tegumen, curved, hook-shaped, without scobination, The ventral margins of the valvae are connected to each other with membrane; the valvae are undivided, with somewhat varying shape distally. The juxta is a simple sclerotized plate, laterally bent towards the dorsal side supporting the valva both ventrally and laterally, without lateral or distal lobes. The vinculum is tapered into an elongate and broad saccus. The phallus is not differentiated apart from occasionally having scobination near the apex in the C. glutinosi species group, markedly inflated in basal half in the C. fissurina species group; there are no cornuti in the vesica in species of the C. glutinosi species group, but one or two dense groups of scobinations in vesica of species of the E. fissurina group. The papillae anales of the female genitalia are covered by long setae, otherwise not differentiated; the ovipositor is not telescopic; the posterior margin of segment 8 is markedly setose, and sternum 8 is ventrolaterally with setose areas that are sometimes shaped as lobes; on the dorsal side of the ostium bursae there is a sclerotized plate; the ostium bursae+antrum is funnel-shaped, separated from the rest of the sclerotized ductus by a somewhat membranous zone. The ductus seminalis is situated near the inception of the ductus and the corpus bursae. The corpus bursae contains one or two signa. One of them is almost rounded, dentate; the other, when present, is formed by a dense group of scobinations.

Remarks. The hindwing venation of the three C. glutinosi specimens examined shows marked variation, even exceeding the considerable variation reported by Albrecht & Kaila (1997) in Elachistidae (Gelechioidea) .

Figures

FIGURE 1. A neighbor-joining tree, generated under the K2P nucleotide substitution model of 16 barcode sequences retrieved from Coelopoeta specimens.

FIGURES 2–4. 2. Head of Coelopoeta glutinosi Walsingham; 3. Head of Coelopoeta phaceliae Kaila; 4. Abdominal skin of Coelopoeta aurora (L. Kaila prep. 6374) showing the shape of sternum 2 and the spine bands of tergal segments.