Prototheora Explained
Prototheora is a genus of moths. It is the only genus of the Prototheoridae, or the African primitive ghost moths, a family of insects in the lepidopteran order, contained in the superfamily Hepialoidea. These moths are endemic to Southern Africa.
Diversity and distribution
Members of the genus Prototheora are found in South Africa (Kristensen, 1999: 60; Nielsen et al., 2000), Angola (Prototheora angolae) and the Mulanje Massif of Malawi (Davis, 2001). See also revisions by Janse (1942) and Davis (1996).
List of species
- Prototheora parachlora (Meyrick, 1919) (originally in Metatheora)
- =Prototheora paraglossa; Janse, 1942
- Prototheora petrosema Meyrick, 1917
- Prototheora monoglossa Meyrick, 1924
- Prototheora corvifera (Meyrick, 1920) (originally in Metatheora)
- Prototheora merga Davis, 1996
- Prototheora quadricornis Meyrick, 1920
- Prototheora biserrata Davis, 1996
- Prototheora serruligera Meyrick, 1920
- Prototheora cooperi Janse, 1942
- Prototheora geniculata Davis, 1996
- Prototheora drackensbergae Davis, 1996
- Prototheora angolae Davis, 1996
- Prototheora malawiensis Davis, 2001
References
- Davis, D.R. (1996). A revision of the southern African family Prototheoridae (Lepidoptera: Hepialoidea). Entomologica Scandinavica, 27: 393-439.
- Davis, D.R. (2001). A new species of Prototheora from Malawi, with additional notes on the distribution and morphology of the genus (Lepidoptera: Prototheoridae). Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington: 103(2): 452-456.Abstract
- Janse, A.J.T. (1942). The moths of South Africa. Volume IV, part 1. Jugatae 78 pp.
- Kristensen, N.P. (1999) [1998]. The non-Glossatan Moths. Ch. 4, pp. 41–62 in Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. 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.
- Nielsen, E.S., Robinson, G.S. and Wagner, D.L. 2000. Ghost-moths of the world: a global inventory and bibliography of the Exoporia (Mnesarchaeoidea and Hepialoidea) (Lepidoptera) Journal of Natural History, 34(6): 823-878.Abstract
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