Caulastrocecis Chretien 1931, sp. n.

Caulastrocecis Chrétien, 1931

The species of Caulastrocesis are habitually rather uniformly coloured having pale forewings with indistinct dark spots and scattered brown or grey scales. Occasionally the forewing pattern can be distinct (C. intersratella (Christoph, 1873); see Junnilainen et al. 2010) or almost absent (C. perexigella Junnilainen, sp. n. (see below)). The frontal part of the head is usually more or less extended, but never with a crater-like structure in the middle of this extension as in Catatinagma (see above). The labial palps are rather short and pointing forwards, but only slightly curved upwards. In the male genitalia, the sacculus is well developed and thick, the valva is rather broad and distally cut off with a small triangular process apically at the costal margin, the saccus is more or less digitate, and the aedeagus is rather robust with a bulbous caecum. In all known cases, the signum in the female genitalia is a sclerotized plate of various shape.

PLATE 1. Figure 1. Head of Dactylotula kinkerella. Figure 2. Head of Catatinagma trivittellum. Figure 3. Head of Coloptilia conchylidella. Figure 4. Head of Megacraspedus separatellus. Figure 5. Head of Megacraspedus lagopellus. Figure 6. Labial palps of Megacraspedus fallax.

In the list of European Gelechiidae (Karsholt & Riedl 1996), two species were included in Caulastrocesis: C. gypsella (Constant, 1893) and C. furfurella (Staudinger, 1871). Subsequently, Elsner et al. (1999) transferred Mesophleps pudicella Mann, 1861 into this genus. Here a poorly known species Caulastrocesis interstratella (Christoph, 1873) comb. n. is transferred into the genus and redescribed (see Junnilainen et al. 2010), and another species is described (see below).