Macrolepidoptera is a group within the
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...
order
Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to:
* Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood
* Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera ( ) is an order (biology), order of insects that includes butterfly, butterflies and moths (both are called lepidopterans). About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera are described, in 126 Family (biology), families and 46 Taxonomic r ...
. Traditionally used for the larger
butterflies
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...
and
moths
Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...
as opposed to the "
microlepidoptera", this group is artificial. However, it seems that by moving some
taxa about, a
monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...
macrolepidoptera can be easily achieved. The two superfamilies
Geometroidea and
Noctuoidea account for roughly one-quarter of all known Lepidoptera.
Taxonomy
In the reformed macrolepidoptera, the following
superfamilies are included:
*
Mimallonoidea – sack bearers
*
Lasiocampoidea – lappet moths
*
Bombycoidea – bombycoid moths
*
Noctuoidea – owlet moths
*
Drepanoidea – drepanids
*
Geometroidea – inchworms
*
Axioidea
Axiidea is an infraorder of decapod crustaceans. They are colloquially known as mud shrimp, ghost shrimp, or burrowing shrimp; however, these decapods are only distantly related to true shrimp. Axiidea and Gebiidea are divergent infraoders of t ...
– European gold moths
*
Calliduloidea – Old World butterfly-moths
*
Hedyloidea – New World butterfly-moths (or moth-butterflies)
*
Papilionoidea – true butterflies
The last two make up the
Rhopalocera, or butterflies.
More recent molecular studies have failed to recover the macrolepidoptera as a monophyletic group, but have found a well supported clade of moths that excludes the butterflies and some other moth superfamilies. This macro-moth clade, named
Macroheterocera, contains the following five or six superfamilies:
*
Mimallonoidea – sack bearers (sometimes included in basal position)
*
Drepanoidea – drepanids
*
Noctuoidea – owlet moths
*
Geometroidea – inchworms
*
Lasiocampoidea – lappet moths
*
Bombycoidea – bombycoid moths
References
External links
*
{{authority control
Protostome unranked clades