Cobubatha, Walker, 1863

Keegan, Kevin L., Rota, Jadranka, Zahiri, Reza, Zilli, Alberto, Wahlberg, Niklas, Schmidt, B. Christian, Lafontaine, J. Donald, Goldstein, Paul Z. & Wagner, David L., 2021, Toward a Stable Global Noctuidae (Lepidoptera) Taxonomy, Insect Systematics and Diversity (AIFB) 5 (3), pp. 1-24 : 5

Cobubatha Clade

The three genera Aucha Walker, 1858 ; Cobubatha Walker, 1863 ; and Tripudia Grote, 1877 formed a well-supported clade (BS = 99, SH = 99.3, UF = 100) that is poorly supported as sister to Dyopsinae in our RAxML analysis (BS = 67) and poorly supported as sister to the clade containing Homolagoa Barnes & McDunnough, 1912 and Plusiinae in our IQ-TREE analysis (SH = 65.2, UF = 27; Fig. 3). Cobubatha and Tripudia are currently treated as Eustrotiinae ( Lafontaine and Schmidt 2010, Schmidt et al. 2018); Aucha has been variously treated as in Amphipyrinae ( Poole 1989) , Acronictinae / Amphipyrinae ( Edwards 1996) , and most recently treated as in Xyleninae ( Holloway 2011) , which we regarded to be a tribe of Noctuinae ( Lafontaine and Schmidt 2010, Schmidt et al. 2018). In addition to our molecular data, the clade stands apart from other noctuids in both adult and larval morphologies. Here we propose a new subfamily for these three genera.