Subtribe Lithosiina Billberg, 1820

The Arctiinae Leach, [1815], constitutes a very extensive subfamily of Lepidoptera belonging to the family Erebidae (Leach, [1815]). Globally, the number of the tribe Lithosiini Billberg, 1820 described is approximately 3150, with an estimated total around 6000 species (Wagner et al., 2008), the most of them belonging to the subtribe Lithosiina Billberg, 1820, sensu Birket-Smith (1965). This extensive group is named as the “lichen moths”, although lichens are not always their only trophic substrate.

The subfamily Arctiinae was previously placed in the family Arctiidae, and subsequently reclassified as a subfamily within the Erebidae (Zahiri et al. 2012). The original subfamily Lithosiinae was downgraded to tribe status as Lithosiini. Certain specialists do not fully agree with all these changes, and an exhaustive review of Lithosiini systematics is required. Dubatolov & Zolotuhin (2011) refer to this in their attempt to separate the Eilema species into monophyletic groups that could be treated as good genera or subgenera, focusing only on Palaeartic species.

We must also mention the eastern, Afrotropical or Australian species. Birket-Smith (1965), in a detailed analysis, dealt with some Palaeartic and African genera in a generic revision of the Lithosiini and Holloway (2001) transferred several eastern species to the genus Brunia Moore, 1878. These authors relied only on the structure of male genitalia, although similar characters are often also well developed in the female genitalia (eg, presence of bulla or additional vaginal sclerites), but for some groups special research on female attributes is needed. Later, Witt & Ronkay (2011) disregarded some of these changes affecting Palaeartic specimens.

It cannot be forgotten the paper of Krüger (2015). It deals with the 333 species of Lithosiini of the Afrotropical fauna, revising the generic concepts based on the tribal and subtribal classification proposed by Birket-Smith (1965) and describes a total of 60 new genera. However, it must be pointed out that their huge effort has been based solely on the study and comparison of the genitalic structure. The combination of DNA barcode sequence analysis and morphological characteristics, a very common procedure in many of today studies, has not been done, so they do not present any phylogenetic results. It is worth to mention that there are no coincidences between the genera and species of the Afrotropical fauna and the European ones.

If we compare the genera proposed by Krüger (2015) with the genera present in Europe and North Africa based on their genital structure, we observe that some of these genera may be related to Eilema sensu lato close to Eilema / Manulea but closer to Manulea than Eilema. The similar structure of the vinculum is also known in several other genera such as those proposed by Krüger, the African Lepidilema Aurivillius, 1910, Dimorphilema Krüger, 2015, Syntemnilema Krüger, 2015 and Lophilema Aurivillius, 1910, but all these genera differ in their valvae structures. If we could include any of these Afrotropical taxa in a phylogenetic analysis with European and North African taxa, we would surely obtain some similar taxonomics overlap.

The present work addresses the study of 21 species previously assigned to Eilema, combining the study of genetic markers with morphological characters, and concludes with the need to separate them into the 11 distinct genera discussed below. In all cases, molecular study has provided a very strong BI support at species level (PP = 1), a clear result reinforced by the RESL clusterisation algorithm that grouped almost all of them in a single Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) that were consistent, when available, with already published Barcoding Index Numbers (BINs).

Genera included.

Eilema Hübner, [1819]

Manulea Wallengren, 1863

Collita Moore, 1878

Katha Moore, 1878

Zobida Birket-Smith, 1965

Wittia de Freina, 1980

Nyea Agenjo, 1983

Setema Freina & Witt, 1984

Muscula Koçak, 1991

Indalia gen. nov.

Pseudokatha gen. nov.