Encyclopedia of Life · EOL (see source)
Elachistidae
Sign in to saveThe Elachistidae (grass-miner moths) are a family of small moths in the superfamily Gelechioidea. Some authors lump about 3,300 species in eight subfamilies here, but this arrangement almost certainly results in a massively paraphyletic and completely unnatural assemblage, united merely by symplesiomorphies retained from the first gelechioid moths.
Species
grass-miner moths
FAMILY
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumArthropoda
- ClassInsecta
- OrderLepidoptera
- FamilyElachistidae
Die Grasminiermotten (Elachistidae) sind eine Familie der Schmetterlinge (Lepidoptera). Sie kommen weltweit mit ca. 3.300 Arten in acht Unterfamilien vor. In Mitteleuropa ist die Familie mit 235 Arten vertreten, in ganz Europa kommt sie mit 246 Arten und Unterarten vor.
via GBIF
Museum specimens
- Specimen records
- 266
- With media
- 27
- Family
- Elachistidae
- Collections
- USNM, SDNHM
- Recorded in
- Venezuela, China, United States, Mexico
~5 min read
Encyclopedic overview
5 sectionsContents
- Genera
- Fossil record
- Former genera
- Footnotes
- References
The Elachistidae (grass-miner moths) are a family of small moths in the superfamily Gelechioidea. Some authors lump about 3,300 species in eight subfamilies here, but this arrangement almost certainly results in a massively paraphyletic and completely unnatural assemblage, united merely by symplesiomorphies retained from the first gelechioid moths.
In fact, most of these moths appear to be either closer to the Oecophorinae and are hence nowadays usually included in the Oecophoridae (Depressariinae, "Deuterogoniinae", Hypertrophinae, Stenomatinae and perhaps the enigmatic Aeolanthes), or constitute quite basal lineages of gelechioids, neither closely related to Elachista nor to Oecophora, and hence best treated as independent families within the Gelechioidea (Agonoxenidae, Ethmiidae). The genus Coelopoeta is sometimes still placed here, but probably belongs in the Oecophorinae.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Elachistidae” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.