Polyvena horatis Poinar & Brown, 1993

Heikkilä, Maria, Brown, John W., Baixeras, Joaquin, Mey, Wolfram & Kozlov, Mikhail V., 2018, Re-examining the rare and the lost: a review of fossil Tortricidae (Lepidoptera), Zootaxa 4394 (1), pp. 41-60 : 47-48

Polyvena horatis Poinar & Brown, 1993

Excavation locality and depository: George Poinar, Jr. private collection (Holotype: L-3-24)/ Dominican Republic: Cordillera Septentrional between Santiago and Puerto Plata, La Toca group of mines (Dominican Amber, La Toca Fm.)/Burdigalian, Early Miocene. The fossil was examined by JWB.

Published illustrations: Poinar and Brown 1993: 26, 28, figs 1–3.

Condition: The amber piece is roughly elliptical in shape (27 × 16 × 4 mm). The fossil is an adult male with a forewing length of 5.8 mm. The specimen is entirely intact with most of the mouthparts and legs visible, and it is exceptional in that the wings are spread allowing the examination of the venation and showing a hint of raised scales. The elongate external portion of the valvae of the genitalia can also be observed.

Comments: Poinar and Brown (1993) provide a detailed description and illustrations of the moth. The authors place the fossil with certainty in the extant subfamily Chlidanotinae based on the presence of the following characters: a generalized wing venation with hindwing veins M 2 and M 3 widely distant, raised scale tufts on the forewing, and elongate valvae. Unfortunately, the most compelling morphological character that supports the monophyly of the subfamily is the presence of a deep longitudinal invagination on the male valva holding a hairpencil arising from the eighth abdominal segment ( Horak & Brown 1991), which is not visible on the fossil moth.

In the molecular phylogeny of Tortricidae by Regier et al. (2012), Chlidanotinae was not recovered as monophyletic, and a paraphyletic Chlidanotinae was chosen as the working hypothesis. Regier et al. (2012) confirmed that Chlidanotinae (as monophyletic or paraphyletic) are the most basal tortricid lineage and recognized the division of the subfamily into three tribes: Polyorthini plus a monophyletic Hilarographini + Chlidanotini, with Polyorthini as the first lineage to diverge. Fagua et al. (2017) also recovered a paraphyletic Chlidanotinae as the basal-most lineages of Tortricidae .

Poinar and Brown (1993) exclude the moth from Chlidanotini and Hilarographini because of differences in the morphology diagnostic of these tribes (e.g., members of these tribes lack raised scales of the forewing and most have conspicuously thickened antennae). Characters indicating that the moth likely belongs to Polyorthini include the termination of vein R 5 before the apex of the wing found in many Polyorthini ; the presence of raised scales on the forewing, and the presence of elongate valvae in the male genitalia. However, the authors consider the assignment of the fossil specimen to this tribe tentative because the most convincing synapomorphies of the tribe are in the male genitalia, which are not visible in the fossil specimen. Nonetheless, we consider this specimen to be a member of Tortricidae .

Polyvena horatis was used by Fagua et al. (2017) to give a minimum age to Chlidanotinae . This use of the fossil is problematic because, as noted above, the subfamily is not monophyletic. Fagua et al. (2017) chose to place the calibration point at the crown of Polyorthini following the suggestion by Poinar and Brown (1993) that the moth could belong in this tribe.

Currently, Polyvena horatis is one of the most thoroughly described fossil tortricids. Although the specimen does not display the full suite of characters characteristic of Chlidanotinae or Polyorthini , the visible characters are in favor of this placement.