Alucita

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. Formerly, many similar moths of superfamilies Alucitoidea, Copromorphoidea and Pterophoroidea were also placed in Alucita.

"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
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

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. 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. However, some subsequent authors 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

The species of Alucita are:

Notes
  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.
  2. Preoccupied by Diakonoff's species and in need of renaming.

References
  1. 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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