The Exoporia are a group of primitive

Lepidoptera Lepidoptera ( ) is an order (biology), order of insects that includes butterfly, butterflies and moths (both are called lepidopterans). About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera are described, in 126 Family (biology), families and 46 Taxonomic r ...

comprising the superfamilies Mnesarchaeoidea and Hepialoidea.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): 823-878. They are a natural group or

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

. Exoporia is the

sister group In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

of the lepidopteran infraorder Heteroneura. They are characterised by their unique female reproductive system which has an external groove between the ostium bursae and the ovipore by which the

sperm Sperm is the male reproductive cell, or gamete, in anisogamous forms of sexual reproduction (forms in which there is a larger, female reproductive cell and a smaller, male one). Animals produce motile sperm with a tail known as a flagellum, whi ...

is transferred to the egg rather than having the mating and egg-laying parts of the abdomen with a common opening (

cloaca In animal anatomy, a cloaca ( ), plural cloacae ( or ), is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts (if present) of many vertebrate animals. All amphibians, reptiles and birds, a ...

) as in other nonditrysian

moths Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

, or with separate openings linked internally by a "ductus seminalis" as in the Ditrysia. See Kristensen (1999: 57) for other exoporian characteristics.

References

*IV Arthropoda: Insecta Teilband / Part 35: 491 pp. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York.

External links

Tree of Life

Abstract
Moth taxonomy Insect infraorders Neolepidoptera {{moth-stub

See also

References

External links