Pterolonchidae

As of 2014 the family may be considered to consist of the following seven genera: • Anathyrsa Meyrick, 1920 - 1 species • Coelopoeta Walsingham, 1907 - 3 species • Houdinia Hoare, Dugdale & Watts, 2006 - 1 species • Homaledra Busck, 1900 - 4 species • Plexippica Meyrick, 1912 - 2 species • Pterolonche Zeller, 1847 - 7 species • Syringopais Hering, 1919 - 1 species The family Pterolonchidae was first named by Edward Meyrick in 1918. Meyrick omitted a description, thus the family was a nomen nudum, until Thomas Bainbrigge Fletcher provided the first description of the family in 1929. In 1987 (the journal volume is dated to 1986, but this issue was published the following year) Antonio Vives Moreno published a revision of the family. Vives included seven species in two genera in the family (Pterolonche and the monotypic Anathyrsa), describing two new species and synonymising one species within the genus Pterolonche. He also published a new subgeneric classification for Pterolonche: the subgenera Agenjius and Gomezbustillus to classify respectively two species native to southern Andalucia and the northwestern Maghreb, and one species native to Sicily. '' In WikiSpecies in 2008, the Pterolonchidae mysteriously included: Three years later, in 2014, a cladistic analysis by Heikkilä et al. added the genera Homaledra and Houdinia to the Pterolonchidae from the family Batrachedridae, moved the two enigmatic genera Coelopoeta and Syringopais from respectively the Elachistidae and the Deoclonidae as monotypic subfamilies within the Pterolonchidae, and two genera were included besides the type genus within a new subfamily Pterolonchinae: • Coelopoetinae (Hodges, 1978) • Coelopoeta Walsingham, 1907 • Pterolonchinae Meyrick, 1918 • Anathyrsa Meyrick, 1920 • Plexippica Meyrick, 1912 • Pterolonche Zeller, 1847 • Pterolonche • Agenjius Vives, 1987 • Gomezbustillus Vives, 1987 • Syringopainae (Hodges, 1999) • Syringopais Hering, 1919 • Unplaced as to subfamily • Homaledra Busck, 1900 • Houdinia Hoare, Dugdale & Watts, 2006 ==Distribution==

'' The genus Pterolonche is found around the Mediterranean Sea, occurring in Portugal, Spain (including the Islas de Cabreras), France, Italy (Sicily, Sardinia), Malta, Hungary, Romania, areas within the territory of the former Yugoslavia, Crete, Cyprus, Anatolia, Iraq (Kurdistan Region), Lower Egypt, eastern Tunisia, northwestern Algeria and northern Morocco. The only species of Syringopais, Two species of Homaledra are known from South America, and two are from North America. Houdinia is restricted to an area in the north of the North Island of New Zealand. ==Ecology==

Both genera Anathyrsa and Pterolonche are nocturnal. In Pterolonche both sexes are attracted to lamps at night and are easy to collect. Homaledra builds elaborate feeding chambers of silk under which the caterpillars hide. larvae infesting the roots of a Centaurea'' species. Coelopoeta caterpillars mine in the leaves of Boraginaceae, which in one species creates a gall-like deformation. Homaledra feeds on the undersides of the leaves of palms. Houdinia mines in Restionaceae and Syringopais in grasses. ==Uses==

Pterolonche inspersa was released as a biological control agent for knapweed, Centaurea diffusa, in Colorado, Montana, and Oregon in the mid to late 1980s, although there was no known establishment of the species in the United States initially, it has since spread to Idaho and British Columbia. Syringopais temperatella is sometimes a major agricultural pest of wheat and barley in Cyprus, Jordan, Iraq and Iran. ==References==