Leucocercops Vári, 1961

Triberti, Paolo, Staude, Hermann, Sharp, Ian & Lopez-Vaamonde, Carlos, 2024, Exploring the diversity of Gracillariidae (Lepidoptera) in South Africa: host plants, distribution, and DNA barcoding analysis, with the description of nine new species, Zootaxa 5529 (1), pp. 1-51 : 19

Leucocercops Vári, 1961

This genus was established by Vári (1961) solely for L. dasmophora ( Meyrick, 1908) , which is known from South Africa and has unknown biology. The author defined it as a genus closely related to the Acrocercops -group but with a somewhat unique position due to the distinct structure of both the male and female genitalia, as well as the forewing pattern, which resembles Phyllonorycter and is uncommon in Acrocercopinae. During the current research, three specimens initially identified as L. dasmophora were collected. Subsequent barcodes revealed that there are actually two genetically divergent BINs (BOLD:ABW0940 and AEC3184) with a divergence of 9.78%. A more detailed examination of the forewing pattern and genitalia confirmed that they were two separate species, one of which is new to science and is described below.