Skip to content
Epicephala

(c) Roger C. Kendrick, all rights reserved, uploaded by Roger C. Kendrick

EntityQ5382502· pop 9· linked from 75 articles

Epicephala

Sign in to save

Epicephala (leafflower moths) is a genus of moths in the family Gracillariidae.

Species

GENUS

  1. KingdomAnimalia
  2. PhylumArthropoda
  3. ClassInsecta
  4. OrderLepidoptera
  5. FamilyGracillariidae
Observations110

via GBIF

Museum specimens

Specimen records
39
With media
1
Family
Gracillariidae
Collections
USNM, AM
Recorded in
United States, Australia

~4 min read

Encyclopedic overview

3 sections
Contents
  • Species
  • References
  • External links

Epicephala (leafflower moths) is a genus of moths in the family Gracillariidae.

Epicephala is of note in the fields of pollination biology and coevolution because many species in this genus are pollinators of plants in the genera Glochidion, Phyllanthus, and Breynia (Phyllanthaceae). These pollinating Epicephala actively pollinate the flowers of their host plants—thereby ensuring that the plants may produce viable seeds—but also lay eggs in the flowers' ovaries, where their larvae consume a subset of the developing seeds as nourishment. This relationship is similar to other specialized pollinating seed-predation mutualisms such as those between figs and fig wasps and yuccas and yucca moths.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Epicephala” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (2)

Available in 8 languages

via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0