Alucita

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Alucitina" redirects here. As used by Zeller in 1841, this refers to many-plumed moths in general. "Rhipidophora" redirects here. In botany, this refers to a genus of diatoms.

Alucita
Twenty-plume moth (A. hexadactyla) imago
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Alucitidae
Genus: Alucita
Linnaeus, 1758
Type species
Alucita hexadactyla
Linnaeus, 1758
Synonyms [1]
  • Aleucita (lapsus)
  • Allucita (lapsus)
  • Alucitina Heydenreich, 1851[Note 1]
  • Euchiradia Hübner, 1826
  • Orneodes Latreille, 1796
  • Orneodus (lapsus)
  • Rhipidophora Hübner, 1822

Alucita is the largest genus of many-plumed moths (family Alucitidae); it is also the type genus of its family and the disputed superfamily Alucitoidea. This genus occurs almost worldwide and contains about 180 species as of 2011; new species are still being described and discovered regularly.[citation needed] Formerly, many similar moths of superfamilies Alucitoidea, Copromorphoidea and Pterophoroidea were also placed in Alucita.[citation needed]

The genus Alucita was established by Carl Linnaeus in the 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as a subgenus of Phalaena, Linné's "wastebin genus" for moths[citation needed]. Johan Christian Fabricius in 1775 seems to have been the first author to consider Alucita a genus in its own right, and it remains so until today.[citation needed] However, some subsequent authors[who?] believed Linnaeus' name to be invalid, and established alternative names for this genus, but, while the oldest of these, Pierre André Latreille's Orneodes, was used instead of Alucita for a long time, all these subsequent names are today recognized as junior synonyms.[1]

Species[edit]

The species of Alucita are:

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Some cite Zeller, 1841 as author; this is incorrect, as Zeller's "Alucitina" is a junior synonym of the family Alucitidae, not the genus Alucita.[citation needed]
  2. ^ Preoccupied by Diakonoff's species and in need of renaming.[citation needed]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Brian Pitkin & Paul Jenkins (November 5, 2004). "Alucita". Butterflies and Moths of the World, Generic Names and their Type-species. Natural History Museum. Retrieved October 15, 2011.
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