Molecular phylogenetic and morphological studies on the systematic position of Heracula discivitta reveal a new subfamily of Pseudobistonidae (Lepidoptera: Geometroidea)

Abstract

Heracula discivitta Moore is an uncommon moth species currently recorded from India, Nepal and China. Although this species has traditionally been placed in Lymantriinae, its systematic position in Macroheterocera has been enigmatic due to its unique morphological features. Here we used molecular and morphological data to explore the systematic position of H. discivitta. Our molecular phylogenetic analyses indicate that this species is sister to Pseudobiston pinratanai Inoue, a member of a recently established monotypic family Pseudobistonidae. The examinations of morphological features further show that H. discivitta shares synapomorphies with Pseudobistonidae. Based on the analysis results, we propose a new subfamily of Pseudobistonidae (Heraculinae subfam.n.) to accommodate H. discivitta. The resemblance of the habitus to that of the brahmaeid genus Calliprogonos Mell & Hering is discussed.This published work has been registered on ZooBank, http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:urn: lsid:zoobank.org:pub:63D17850-6D51-4E03-A5D6-F9EF6E7AF402.

The mitochondrial genomes of the Geometroidea (Lepidoptera) and their phylogenetic implications

“…These results overall indicate that the third coding positions of 13 PCGs contain high phylogenetic informativeness although they may have experienced some substitution saturation (Yang et al, 2021 ). Regardless of the Pseudobistonidae with no mitogenome available, the close relationship between Epicopeiidae and Sematuridae is recovered by multilocus data in previous molecular studies (Rajaei et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2019 ). However, the placement of Uraniidae remains controversial, being closer to the Epicopeiidae and Sematuridae rather than to Geometridae as recovered by most of the previous multilocus molecular studies but with low to moderate supports (e.g., Rajaei et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2019 ).…”

“…According to recent molecular investigations (Bazinet et al, 2013 ; Rajaei et al, 2015 ; Regier et al, 2013 ; Wang et al, 2019 ; Yang, Zhang, et al, 2019 ), five families are included in Geometroidea. The present study sampled four families, including the Uraniidae represented in the mitogenome‐based phylogenetic investigation for the first time.…”

“…According to recent molecular investigations (Bazinet et al, 2013;Rajaei et al, 2015;Regier et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2019; yielded the Uraniidae + Sematuridae, whereas other datasets showed Epicopeiidae + Uraniidae. In Bayesian analyses, the same situation was recovered.…”

“…Three families, i.e., Geometridae, Uraniidae, and Sematuridae, had been defined for Geometroidea before (Mitter et al, 2017 ). Later, molecular evidence strongly suggested the inclusion of Epicopeiidae historically from Drepanoidea (Bazinet et al, 2013 ; Regier et al, 2013 ; Yang, Zhang, et al, 2019 ), and a new family Pseudobistonidae (Rajaei et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2019 ). To date, the relationship among the five families has been recovered as ((Uraniidae, Geometridae), (Sematuridae, (Epicopeiidae, Pseudobistonidae))) by most of the previous studies, but this topology needs to be confirmed because the clade consisting of Sematuridae, Epicopeiidae, and Pseudobistonidae has been either lowly supported (Rajaei et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2019 ) or sparsely sampled (Murillo‐Ramos et al, 2019 ) in previous studies.…”

Adding leaves to the Lepidoptera tree: capturing hundreds of nuclear genes from old museum specimens

“…The impact of gene and taxon sampling on support needs to be further investigated by including more epicopeiids and sematurids. Additionally, Heracula discivitta Moore, recently moved from Lymantriidae to Pseudobistonidae (Wang et al ., 2019), should be included in a large scale molecular dataset to further investigate these relationships. Zhang et al .…”