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Epicephala
Sign in to saveEpicephala (leafflower moths) is a genus of moths in the family Gracillariidae.
Species
GENUS
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumArthropoda
- ClassInsecta
- OrderLepidoptera
- FamilyGracillariidae
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 sectionsContents
- 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.
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