Copromorphoidea

Copromorphoidea, the "fruitworm moths", is a superfamily of insects in the lepidopteran order. These moths are small to medium-sized (10–50 mm. in wingspan) and are broad-winged bearing some resemblance to the superfamilies Tortricoidea and Immoidea. The antennae are often "pectinate" especially in males, and many species of these well camouflaged moths bear raised tufts of scales on the wings and a specialised fringe of scales at the base of the hindwing sometimes in females only; there are a number of other structural characteristics (Common, 1990; Dugdale et al., 1999) . The position of this superfamily is not certain, but it has been placed in the natural group of "Apoditrysia" "Obtectomera" (Minet, 1991), rather than with the superfamilies Alucitoidea or Epermenioidea within which it has sometimes previously been placed, on the grounds that shared larval and pupal characteristics of these groups have probably evolved independently. It has been suggested that the division into two families should be abandoned (e.g. Holloway et al., 2001).

Copromorphoidea
Carposinidae specimen
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Infraorder: Heteroneura
Clade: Eulepidoptera
Clade: Ditrysia
Clade: Apoditrysia
(unranked): Obtectomera
Superfamily: Copromorphoidea
Hampson, 1918
Families

Copromorphidae
Carposinidae

Diversity
About 318 species
Synonyms[1]

Carposinoidea Walsingham, 1897

Distribution

Copromorphoidea occur worldwide except the northwest Palaearctic region (Dugdale et al., 1999).

Behaviour

Adults are night-flying and attracted to lights. Caterpillars live between joined leaves or fruits or bore within stems. The larvae pupate with the silken gallery or descend to the ground and make a cocoon covered in detritus (Dugdale et al., 1999).

Larval hostplants

The hostplants include the gymnosperm genus Podocarpus and quite a wide range of dicotyledon families . As the moths can infest fruit some are considered pest species such as the "Peach Fruit Moth".

References
  1. van Nieukerken, Erik J.; Lauri Kaila; Ian J. Kitching; Niels P. Kristensen; David C. Lees; Joël Minet; Charles Mitter; Marko Mutanen; Jerome C. Regier; Thomas J. Simonsen; Niklas Wahlberg; Shen-Horn Yen; Reza Zahiri; David Adamski; Joaquin Baixeras; Daniel Bartsch; Bengt Å. Bengtsson; John W. Brown; Sibyl Rae Bucheli; Donald R. Davis; Jurate De Prins; Willy De Prins; Marc E. Epstein; Patricia Gentili-Poole; Cees Gielis; Peter Hättenschwiler; Axel Hausmann; Jeremy D. Holloway; Axel Kallies; Ole Karsholt; Akito Y. Kawahara; Sjaak (J.C.) Koster; Mikhail V. Kozlov; J. Donald Lafontaine; Gerardo Lamas; Jean-François Landry; Sangmi Lee; Matthias Nuss; Kyu-Tek Park; Carla Penz; Jadranka Rota; Alexander Schintlmeister; B. Christian Schmidt; Jae-Cheon Sohn; M. Alma Solis; Gerhard M. Tarmann; Andrew D. Warren; Susan Weller; Roman V. Yakovlev; Vadim V. Zolotuhin; Andreas Zwick (23 December 2011). Zhang, Zhi-Qiang (ed.). "Order Lepidoptera Linnaeus, 1758" (PDF). Zootaxa. Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness. 3148: 212–221.
  • Dugdale, J.S., Kristensen, N.P., Robinson, G.S. and Scoble, M.J. (1999). The smaller microlepidoptera grade superfamilies, Ch.13., pp. 217–232 in Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. Handbuch der Zoologie. Eine Naturgeschichte der Stämme des Tierreiches / Handbook of Zoology. A Natural History of the phyla of the Animal Kingdom. Band / Volume IV Arthropoda: Insecta Teilband / Part 35: 491 pp. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York.
  • Holloway, J.D., Kibby, G and Peggie, D. (1997). The families of Malesian moths and butterflies. Fauna Malesia Handbooks. 455 pp. Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden.
  • Minet, J. (1991). Tentative reconstruction of the ditrysian phylogeny (Lepidoptera: Glossata). Entomologica Scandinavica, 22: 69–95.
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