Kingdom Animalia Class Insecta Family Sematuridae Rank Species | Phylum Arthropoda Order Lepidoptera Scientific name Apoprogones hesperistis | |
Genus Apoprogones
Hampson, 1903 Similar Sematuridae, Geometroidea, Uraniidae, Castniidae, Drepanidae | ||
Apoprogoninae is a subfamily of the moth family Sematuridae, represented by a single species from Swaziland, South Africa.
Contents
Taxonomy and systematics
This species, Apoprogones hesperistis, is presumably the sister taxon of some or all South American Sematuridae but fresh collections are probably needed to use a DNA sequencing approach to this question [1]. The moth measures 4 cm. in wingspan and previously placed in the Castniidae (Shields and Dvorak, 1979) but it was recognised by A.J.T. Janse (Janse, 1932) as belonging to this family.
Morphology and identification
Apoprogones hesperistis ] has strongly clubbed or hooked antennae, like a butterfly, giving it a skipper-like appearance (Shields and Dvorak, 1979), hence the species name. The hindwing is not tailed, unlike Sematurinae which have the veins "M2" and "M3" in the hindwing bearing tails (Minet and Scoble, 1999). The adult male moth has a pair of "hair pencils" at the base of the abdomen. On the head (in contrast to Sematurinae) the ocelli are absent and the compound eyes not hairy; the wing venation differs between subfamilies and the forewing "M1" vein is "free" as opposed to sharing a "stalk" with vein "R1" in Sematurinae (Minet and Scoble, 1999). These and other structural differences have been enough for some authors to consider the African and American groups distinct at family level.
Conservation
Apoprogoninae is an evolutionarily distinctive higher-level taxon which is geographically restricted and apparently not seen since its description in the early 1900s, and therefore merits dedicated conservation attention and new surveys [2].