An annotated list of the Lepidoptera of Alberta, Canada
Author
Pohl, Greg
Northern Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada, Edmonton ,, Canada
Author
Anweiler, Gary
University of Alberta Strickland Entomology Museum ,, Canada
Author
Schmidt, Christian
Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Ottawa, Canada
Author
Kondla, Norbert
Calgary ,, Canada
text
ZooKeys
2010
2010-03-05
38
38
1
549
journal article
10.3897/zookeys.38.383
aa97d560-1969-4b79-93bb-2614b7835c0e
1313–2970
576629
32.
Gelechiidae
– gelechiid moths
A diverse family of moths with upturned palps, and with hindwings having a sinuate distal margin with the tip often extended into a sharp point. Most adults are drably marked with mottled brown, black, and white scales, but a few are brightly colored. Most species are active at night. Larvae of most species are leafrollers or leaftiers; a few species are seed feeders, leafminers and needleminers, or stem and root gall formers.
The family
Gelechiidae
is a large, poorly known group, probably the most poorly known large family of
Lepidoptera
in North America: Hodges (1999a) estimated that only 30% of species had been described. Approximately 2500 species are known worldwide.
Lee et al. (2009)
published a checklist of the North American
Gelechiidae
listing 886 species; 121 of these are reported herein from AB.
32.1.
Gelechiinae
Minute to small (
8–25 mm
wingspan) moths with typical features of the family as described above.
The subfamily
Gelechiinae
comprises the majority of described species of
Gelechiidae
. Th e taxonomic state of this subfamily is poor, with many genera inadequately delimited and unrevised. Many species have not been adequately described or illustrated, so they are diffi cult or impossible to identify without examination of
type
material. Approximately 3500 species are known worldwide, 797 of which are known from North America. One hundred and ten species are reported from AB. Many more species undoubtedly occur in this province that have not been collected or have been collected but remain unidentified or misidentified in collections. Genera that are fairly well known are
Caryocolum
(
Huemer 1988
)
,
Bryotropha
(
Rutten and Karsholt 2004
)
,
Chionodes
(
Hodges 1999b
)
,
Coleotechnites
(
Freeman 1960
,
1962
,
1963
,
1965
),
Deltophora
(
Sattler 1979
)
,
Filatima
(in part,
Clarke 1947
;
Hodges and Adamski 1997
),
Gnorimoschema
and related genera (
Povolný 1967
,
1998a
,
1998b
,
1998c
,
1998d
,
2000
; Miller 2000;
Powell and Povolný 2001
), and
Prolita
and related genera (
Hodges 1966b
). The tribe
Teleiodini
has been revised recently at the genus level (
Lee and Brown 2008
).