Galacticidae is a recently recognised and enigmatic

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 ...

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 ...

s in the lepidopteran order. These moderate sized moths are 8–17 mm in wingspan and have previously been embedded within several lepidopteran superfamilies (

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 re ...

Psychidae 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, ...

Urodoidea Urodoidea is a superfamily of moths in the clade Apoditrysia. It currently contains two families: Urodidae and Ustyurtiidae. References {{Taxonbar, from=Q19896545 Lepidoptera superfamilies Ditrysia ...

, Sesioidea and in several families of

Yponomeutoidea Yponomeutoidea is a superfamily of ermine moths and relatives. There are about 1,800 species of Yponomeutoids worldwide, most of them known to come from temperate regions. This superfamily is one of the earliest groups to evolve external feeding ...

), but Galacticidae is currently placed in its own superfamily at the base of the natural group

Apoditrysia 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 con ...

(Dugdale et al., 1999

998 Year 998 ( CMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Spring – Otto III retakes Rome and restores power in the papal city. Crescenti ...

May, 2004). Note: the superfamily was unintentionally called "Galaticoidea" in Dugdale et al. (1999)

The relationships of Galacticidae need reassessment with new characters including DNA dat

The genus ''Homadaula'' looks remarkably like the yponomeutid genera ''

Prays ''Prays'' is a genus of moths of the family Praydidae, formerly assigned to (depending on the author) Plutellidae or Yponomeutidae. Selected species *'' Prays acmonias'' - Meyrick, 1914 (from India) *''Prays alpha'' - Moriuti, 1977 (from Japan) ...

'' and '' Atemelia'' and some species are reminiscent of " small ermine" moths. Despite the spined abdominal segments of the pupae and a few other characters (Minet, 1986) some possess structural similarities to yponomeutids as well and have similar larval behaviou

so their removal from the

has been questioned (Mey, 2004). The family is distributed in the Old World from

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

, Australia and New Caledonia. The richest

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

is '' Homadaula'' with eight species. The mimosa webworm ('' Homadaula anisocentra'') is a pest of ornamental plant

which has been introduced to eastern North America (Moriuti, 1963; Dugdale et al., 1999).

References

*Dugdale, J.S., Kristensen, N.P., Robinson, G.S. and Scoble, M.J. (1999)

The smaller microlepidoptera grade superfamilies, Ch.13., pp. 217–232 in Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). ''Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies''. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. Handbuch der Zoologie. Eine Naturgeschichte der Stämme des Tierreiches / Handbook of Zoology. A Natural History of the phyla of the Animal Kingdom. Band / Volume IV Arthropoda: Insecta Teilband / Part 35: 491 pp.

Walter de Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

, Berlin, New York. *Mey, W. (2004). Galacticidae (Ditrysia incertae sedis). ''Esperiana'' 1: 91-102. *Minet, J. (1986). Ébauche d'une classification moderne de l'ordre des Lépidoptères. ''Alexanor'' 14(7): 291-313. *Moriuti, S. (1963). Remarks on the ''Paraprays anisocentra'' (Meyrick, 1922) (Plutellidae), with descriptions of its larva and pupa. ''Transactions of the Lepidopterological Society of Japan'', 14(3): 52-59.

External links

CSIRO
Gallery. Six images.
Tree of LifeNatural History Museum hosts database
*

* ttp://www.hfrr.ksu.edu/DesktopModules/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=1665 Mimosa webworm, updated 16 February 2012br>''Homadaula anisocentra'' resting posture from Bob Patterson's Entomology Hobby Page Accessed 13 March 2007
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1139505 Moth families