Pterolonche

Superregnum: Eukaryota
Cladus: Unikonta
Cladus: Opisthokonta
Cladus: Holozoa
Regnum: Animalia
Subregnum: Eumetazoa
Cladus: Bilateria
Cladus: Nephrozoa
Cladus: Protostomia
Cladus: Ecdysozoa
Cladus: Panarthropoda
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Hexapoda
Classis: Insecta
Cladus: Dicondylia
Subclassis: Pterygota
Cladus: Metapterygota
Infraclassis: Neoptera
Cladus: Eumetabola
Cladus: Endopterygota
Superordo: Panorpida
Cladus: Amphiesmenoptera
Ordo: Lepidoptera
Subordo: Glossata
Cladus: Coelolepida
Cladus: Myoglossata
Cladus: Neolepidoptera
Infraordo: Heteroneura
Cladus: Eulepidoptera
Cladus: Ditrysia
Cladus: Apoditrysia
Superfamilia: Gelechioidea

Familia: Pterolonchidae
Genus: Pterolonche
Subgenera: P. (Agenjius) – P. (Gomezbustillus) – P. (Pterolonche)
Name

Pterolonche Zeller, 1847
References
Primary references
Additional references

Pterolonche is small genus of small moths of the family Pterolonchidae.[1][2]

Taxonomy

The genus was first circumscribed in 1847 by Philipp Christoph Zeller to include two new species.[1][2] The type species is Pterolonche albescens.[2]

In 1984 Antonio Vives Moreno described the new species P. gozmaniella from Andalucia, but in 1987 Vives reviewed the family Pterolonchidae in Spain, synonymising P. gozmaniella with P. lutescentella and P. gracilis with P. inspersa, describing a new species, and counting five species in the genus Pterolonche. He subdivided the genus in three subgenera. He did not address the species described by Hans Georg Amsel from respectively Malta and Iraq a few decades earlier.[1]

In 2011 it was classified as one of two genera in the family Pterolonchidae in the superfamily Gelechioidea by van Nieukerken et al.[3]

In 2014 a cladistics analysis performed by Heikkilä et al. expanded the family to seven genera. They classified the genus in the subfamily Pterolonchinae.[4]
Species
A Pterolonche inspersa caterpillar

The following species are known:[1][2]

subgenus Pterolonche - The imagoes have a white or greyish general colouration
Pterolonche albescens Zeller, 1847 - Sicily, throughout Spain, Balearic Islands, Islas de Cabreras, Algarve, France, Hungary, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Malta, Morocco
Pterolonche inspersa Staudinger, 1859 - Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco.[5]
Pterolonche vallettae Amsel, 1955 - Malta[6]
subgenus Agenjius Vives, 1987 - The imagoes have a pinkish-yellow colouration
Pterolonche lutescentella Chrétien, 1922 - Andalucia, Balearic Islands and northwest Magreb in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
subgenus Gomezbustillus Vives, 1987 - The imagoes have a pallid yellow colouration
Pterolonche pulverulenta Zeller, 1847 - Andalucia, Madrid, Gibraltar, Algarve, Baixo Alentejo, Sicily, Malta, Cyprus, Morocco, Tunisia
Pterolonche traugottolseniella Vives, 1987 - Málaga, Algarve
unplaced
Pterolonche kurdistanella Amsel, 1959 - Iraq

Distribution

The species are all found around the Mediterranean Sea.[2] Spain has at least five species, Portugal has four.[1] As far as is known, P. vallettae appears to be endemic to Malta.[6]
Ecology
Pterolonche inspersa larvae infesting the roots of a Centaurea species.

The species are all nocturnal. Both sexes are attracted to artificial lights at night. In Spain the moths have two generations per year, with the first emerging from the end of march to the beginning of June, and a second, much more abundant generation between July and the start of October. They have been encountered from sea level to 1500m in altitude in Spain.[1]

P. inspersa caterpillars feed on Centaurea species, a herbaceous, thistle-like plant. They tunnel into the root crown of their host plant and feed on the root tissue. As they reach the root cortex, they spin a silken tube and feed from within the tube. Mature larvae overwinter in the roots. In spring, a silken tube is made above the soil surface in which pupation takes place.[7]
Uses

P. inspersa was released as a biological control agent for knapweed, Centaurea diffusa, in Colorado, Montana, and Oregon in the mid to late 1980s, although there was no known establishment of the species in the United States initially, it has since spread to Idaho and British Columbia.[7][8]
References

Vives Moreno, Antonio (27 February 1987). "La familia Pterolonchidae Meyrick, 1918, de España y Portugal (Insecta, Lepidoptera)" (PDF). Revista Española de Entomología (in Spanish). 62 (1–4): 319–337. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
Savela, Markku (24 August 2017). "Pterolonche". Lepidoptera and some other life forms. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
van Nieukerken, Erik J., Kaila, Lauri, Kitching, Ian J., Kristensen, Niels P., Lees, David C., Minet, Joël, Mitter, Charles, Mutanen, Marko, Regier, Jerome C., Simonsen, Thomas J., Wahlberg, Niklas, Yen, Shen-Horn, Zahiri, Reza, Adamski, David, Baixeras, Joaquin, Bartsch, Daniel, Bengtsson, Bengt Å., Brown, John W., Bucheli, Sibyl Rae, Davis, Donald R., de Prins, Jurate, de Prins, Willy, Epstein, Marc E., Gentili-Poole, Patricia, Gielis, Cees, Hättenschwiler, Peter, Hausmann, Axel, Holloway, Jeremy D., Kallies, Axel, Karsholt, Ole, Kawahara, Akito Y., Koster, Sjaak (J.C.), Kozlov, Mikhail V., Lafontaine, J. Donald, Lamas, Gerardo, Landry, Jean-François, Lee, Sangmi, Nuss, Matthias, Park, Kyu-Tek, Penz, Carla, Rota, Jadranka, Schintlmeister, Alexander, Schmidt, B. Christian, Sohn, Jae-Cheon, Alma Solis, M., Tarmann, Gerhard M., Warren, Andrew D., Weller, Susan, Yaklovlev, Roman V., Zolotuhin, Vadim V. & Zwick, Andreas (2011). "Order Lepidoptera Linnaeus, 1758" (PDF). In Zhang, Zhi-Qiang (ed.). Animal biodiversity: an outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness. Zootaxa. Vol. 3148. pp. 212–221. ISBN 978-1-86977-850-7. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
Heikkilä, Maria; Mutanen, Marko; Kekkonen, Mari; Kaila, Lauri (November 2014). "Morphology reinforces proposed molecular phylogenetic affinities: a revised classification for Gelechioidea (Lepidoptera)". Cladistics. 30 (6): 563–589. doi:10.1111/cla.12064. PMID 34794251. S2CID 84696495. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
"Pterolonche inspersa Staudinger, 1859". Fauna Europaea. Fauna Europaea Secretariat, Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz & Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung. Retrieved 28 December 2019.
"Pterolonche Zeller, 1847". Fauna Europaea. Fauna Europaea Secretariat, Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz & Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
"Pterolonche inspersa". BugWood. Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health, University of Georgia. 19 January 2011. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
"Pterolonche inspersa". Weed-feeder. Department of Entomology, Cornell University. Retrieved 25 August 2011.