__NOTOC__ The Coleophoridae are a

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

of small

moth 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 ...

s, belonging to the huge

superfamily SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...

Gelechioidea. Collectively known as case-bearers, casebearing moths or case moths, this family is represented on all continents, but the majority are found in temperate areas of the

Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...

. They are most common in the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sib ...

, and rare in

sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

, and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

; consequently, they probably originated (like most or all other Gelechioidea families) in northern

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...

. They are relatively common in houses, they seek out moist areas to rest and procreate.

Description and ecology

These " micromoths" are generally of slender build, and like in many of their relatives, the margins of their wings usually consist of a "fringe" of hairs. The tiny

caterpillar Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Sy ...

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...

e initially feed internally on the

leaves A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, st ...

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanis ...

s, or

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosper ...

s of their host plants. When they emerge to feed externally, they usually construct a protective silken case, discarded and built anew as they grow and molt. The common names of the Coleophoridae refer to this habit. The

bagworm moth The Psychidae (bagworm moths, also simply bagworms or bagmoths) are a family of the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). The bagworm family is fairly small, with about 1,350 species described. Bagworm species are found globally, with some, su ...

s (Psychidae), which also belong to the primitive

Ditrysia The Ditrysia are a natural group or clade of insects in the lepidopteran order containing both butterflies and moths. They are so named because the female has two distinct sexual openings: one for mating, and the other for laying eggs (in contr ...

(although to superfamily

Tineoidea Tineoidea is the ditrysian superfamily of moths that includes clothes moths, bagworms and relatives. There are six families usually included within it, Eriocottidae, Arrhenophanidae, Lypusidae, Acrolophidae, Tineidae and Psychidae, whose r ...

, not Gelechioidea), build similar cases as larvae. As opposed to these, though, the case-bearer females leave their cases to

pupa A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in thei ...

te and have normally developed wings as adults, instead of being

neotenous Neoteny (), also called juvenilization,Montagu, A. (1989). Growing Young. Bergin & Garvey: CT. is the delaying or slowing of the physiological, or somatic, development of an organism, typically an animal. Neoteny is found in modern humans compare ...

as female bagworms usually are.

Taxonomy and systematics

About 95% of the over 1,000 described

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

have been placed in the "

wastebin genus Wastebasket taxon (also called a wastebin taxon, dustbin taxon or catch-all taxon) is a term used by some taxonomists to refer to a taxon that has the sole purpose of classifying organisms that do not fit anywhere else. They are typically defined ...

" ''

Coleophora ''Coleophora'' is a very large genus of moths of the family Coleophoridae. It contains some 1,350 described species. The genus is represented on all continents, but the majority are found in the Nearctic and Palaearctic regions. Many authors ...

''. Many proposals have been made to split smaller genera from ''Coleophora'', but few have been accepted, due to the uncertainties about which species are closest to the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specim ...

of ''Coleophora'' – '' C. anatipennella'' – and thus would remain in the genus. Regarding the family's circumscription versus other Gelechioidea, it is by now far less disputed than usual for this superfamily. The

Blastobasidae The Blastobasidae are a family of moths in the superfamily Gelechioidea. Its species can be found almost anywhere in the world, though in some places they are not native but introduced by humans. In some arrangements, these moths are included in ...

Momphidae The Momphidae, or mompha moths, is a family of moths with some 115 described species. It was described by Gottlieb August Wilhelm Herrich-Schäffer in 1857. These moths tend to be rather small with a wingspan of up to 21 mm. The wings are he ...

(mompha moths), Pterolonchidae, and

Symmocidae The Symmocinae are a subfamily of moths in the superfamily Gelechioidea. These small moths are found mainly in the Palearctic and Africa. In modern treatments, they are usually united with the concealer moth family Autostichidae. History of cl ...

have formerly been included in the Coleophoridae as subfamilies, but are more often considered separate families today. With the internal relationships of Coleophoridae genera (as far as they are widely accepted) and species essentially unresolved due to the classification problems mentioned above, no subfamilies or

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

s are accepted in the family for the time being.

Genera

Genera of case-bearers at least provisionally accepted by recent authors include: * '' Amblyxena'' * '' Augasma'' * ''

'' * '' Corythangela'' (Batrachedridae) * '' Enscepastra'' (Batrachedridae) * '' Goniodoma'' * '' Iriothyrsa'' (Agonoxeninae) * '' Ischnophanes'' * '' Ischnopsis'' (Agonoxeninae) * '' Metriotes'' * '' Nasamonica'' * '' Porotica'' (Agonoxeninae)

References

See also Gelechioidea Talk page for comparison of some approaches to gelechioid systematics and taxonomy.

Description and ecology

Taxonomy and systematics

Genera

See also

References

Further reading