Cecidosidae is a family of primitive
monotrysia
The Monotrysia are a group of moths in the lepidopteran order, not currently considered to be a natural group or clade. The group is so named because the female has a single genital opening for mating and laying eggs, in contrast to the rest of ...
n moths in the order
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 ...
which have a piercing ovipositor used for laying eggs in plant tissue in which they induce
galls
Galls (from the Latin , 'oak-apple') or ''cecidia'' (from the Greek , anything gushing out) are a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants. Plant galls are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to benign tumors or wart ...
, or they mine in bark (Davis, 1999; Hoare and Dugdale, 2003). Nine species occur in southern
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
, five species in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...
(Parra, 1998) and ''Xanadoses nielseni'' was recently
described from
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
(Hoare and Dugdale, 2003). Some minute
parasitoid
In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host (biology), host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionarily stable str ...
wasps are known (Burks ''et al.'', 2005).
References
*Burks, R.A. Gibson, G.A.P. and La Salle, J. (2005). Nomenclatural changes in Neotropical Eulophidae, Eupelmidae and Torymidae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) relating to parasitoids of ''Cecidoses eremita'' (Lepidoptera: Cecidosidae). ''Zootaxa'', 1082: 45–5
pdf
*Davis, D.R. (1999). The Monotrysian Heteroneura. Ch. 6, pp. 65–90 in Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). ''Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies''. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. Handbuch der Zoologie. Eine Naturgeschichte der Stämme des Tierreiches / 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.
*Hoare, R.J.B. and Dugdale, J.S. (2003). Description of the New Zealand incurvarioid ''Xanadoses nielseni'', gen. nov., sp. nov. and placement in Cecidosidae (Lepidoptera). ''Invertebrate Systematics'', 17(1): 47–57.
*Parra, L.E. (1998). A redescription of ''Cecidoses argentinana'' (Cecidosidae) and its early stages, with comments on its taxonomic position. ''Nota Lepidopterologica'', 21(3): 206–214.
External links
Tree of LifeAvailable generic names from Natural History Museum Lepidoptera genus database
Moth families
Taxa named by Juan Brèthes
{{Incurvarioidea-stub