Pterolonche
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| Pterolonche | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Pterolonche inspersa adult | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Pterolonchidae |
| Genus: | Pterolonche Zeller, 1847 |
| Synonyms[1] | |
| |
Pterolonche is small genus of small moths of the family Pterolonchidae.[1][2]
The genus was first circumscribed in 1847 by Philipp Christoph Zeller to include two new species.[1][2] The type species is Pterolonche albescens.[2]
In 1984 Antonio Vives Moreno described the new species P. gozmaniella from Andalucia, but in 1987 Vives reviewed the family Pterolonchidae in Spain, synonymising P. gozmaniella with P. lutescentella and P. gracilis with P. inspersa, describing a new species, and counting five species in the genus Pterolonche. He subdivided the genus in three subgenera. He did not address the species described by Hans Georg Amsel from respectively Malta and Iraq a few decades earlier.[1]
In 2011 it was classified as one of two genera in the family Pterolonchidae in the superfamily Gelechioidea by van Nieukerken et al..[3]
In 2014 a cladistics analysis performed by Heikkilä et al.. expanded the family to seven genera. They classified the genus in the subfamily Pterolonchinae.[4]
Species
The following species are known:[1][2]
- subgenus Pterolonche - The imagoes have a white or greyish general colouration
- Pterolonche albescens Zeller, 1847 - Sicily, throughout Spain, Balearic Islands, Islas de Cabreras, Algarve, France, Hungary, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Malta, Morocco
- Pterolonche inspersa Staudinger, 1859 - Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco.[5]
- Pterolonche vallettae Amsel, 1955 - Malta[6]
- subgenus Agenjius Vives, 1987 - The imagoes have a pinkish-yellow colouration
- subgenus Gomezbustillus Vives, 1987 - The imagoes have a pallid yellow colouration
- Pterolonche pulverulenta Zeller, 1847 - Andalucia, Madrid, Gibraltar, Algarve, Baixo Alentejo, Sicily, Malta, Cyprus, Morocco, Tunisia
- Pterolonche traugottolseniella Vives, 1987 - Málaga, Algarve
- unplaced
- Pterolonche kurdistanella Amsel, 1959 - Iraq
