''Prototheora'' is a genus of moths. It is the only genus of the Prototheoridae, or the African primitive ghost moths, a
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
of
insects
Insects (from Latin ') are 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 pairs of jointed ...
in the
lepidoptera
Lepidoptera ( ) or lepidopterans is an order (biology), order of winged insects which includes butterflies and moths. About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organ ...
n
order
Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to:
* A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica
* Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood
...
, contained in the
superfamily Hepialoidea. These moths are
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...
to
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme for Africa, United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and ...
.
Diversity and distribution
Members of the genus ''Prototheora'' are found in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
(Kristensen, 1999: 60; Nielsen ''et al.'', 2000),
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...
(''Prototheora angolae'') and the
Mulanje Massif of
Malawi
Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over and ...
(Davis, 2001). See also revisions by Janse (1942) and Davis (1996).
List of species
*''
Prototheora parachlora''
(Meyrick, 1919) (originally in ''Metatheora'')
**=''Prototheora paraglossa'';
Janse, 1942
*''
Prototheora petrosema''
Meyrick, 1917
*''
Prototheora monoglossa''
Meyrick, 1924
*''
Prototheora corvifera''
(Meyrick, 1920) (originally in ''Metatheora'')
*''
Prototheora merga''
Davis, 1996
*''
Prototheora quadricornis''
Meyrick, 1920
*''
Prototheora biserrata''
Davis, 1996
*''
Prototheora serruligera''
Meyrick, 1920
*''
Prototheora cooperi''
Janse, 1942
*''
Prototheora geniculata''
Davis, 1996
*''
Prototheora drackensbergae''
Davis, 1996
*''
Prototheora angolae''
Davis, 1996
*''
Prototheora malawiensis''
Davis, 2001
References
*Davis, D.R. (1996). A revision of the southern African family Prototheoridae (Lepidoptera: Hepialoidea). ''Entomologica Scandinavica'', 27: 393-439.
*Davis, D.R. (2001). A new species of ''Prototheora'' from Malawi, with additional notes on the distribution and morphology of the genus (Lepidoptera: Prototheoridae). ''Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington'': 103(2): 452-45
Abstract*Janse, A.J.T. (1942). ''The moths of South Africa. Volume IV, part 1. Jugatae'' 78 pp.
*Kristensen, N.P. (1999)
998
Year 998 ( CMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* Spring – Otto III retakes Rome and restores power in the papal city. Crescentius II (the Younger) and his followers ...
The non-Glossatan Moths. Ch. 4, pp. 41–62 in Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). ''Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies''. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. 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, Berlin, New York.
*Nielsen, E.S., Robinson, G.S. and Wagner, D.L. 2000. Ghost-moths of the world: a global inventory and bibliography of the Exoporia (Mnesarchaeoidea and Hepialoidea) (Lepidoptera) ''Journal of Natural History'', 34(6): 823-87
Abstract
Sources
External links
LepTree.netTree of LifeWikispecies
Hepialoidea
Exoporia genera
Taxa named by Edward Meyrick
{{Hepialoidea-stub