Global Nepticulidae, Opostegidae, and Tischeriidae (Lepidoptera): temporal dynamics of species descriptions and their authors

Abstract

This study identifies the number of named and described species of three monotrysian, plant-mining lepidopteran families worldwide: Nepticulidae and Opostegidae (Nepticuloidea), and Tischeriidae (Tischerioidea). At the end of 2021, we estimated that a total of 1000 Nepticulidae species, 197 Opostegidae species, and 170 Tischeriidae species have been described since the taxonomic practice of describing species began in the 18th century. We examine and discuss the history of descriptions and authorship of species worldwide for each of the three families. We found that the total (accumulative) number of species described increased with each time period delineated. About five new species were described per year on average, or about 22 new species were described per year in the 21st century. We recognize researchers with the most number of described species in these three taxa.

Four Tischeriidae species in Colombia, including a new Astrotischeria species: is it not too little for a megadiverse country?

“…The unique specialised morphological characters of Tischeriidae were sur-veyed in the monographs by Braun (1972) and Puplesis, Diškus (2003) as well as discussed in numerous recent papers (Kobayashi et al, 2016;Xu et al, 2017Xu et al, , 2018Xu et al, , 2021Stonis et al, 2018Stonis et al, , 2020aStonis et al, , 2020bStonis et al, , 2021aStonis et al, , 2021bStonis et al, , 2021cStonis & Solis, 2020). Recently, it was estimated that by the end of 2021, 170 tischeriid species were described and named globally (Dobrynina et al, 2022); currently, the number for the world fauna has reached 183 species. The authors of the latter publication have also provided temporal dynamics and charts of authors involved in the description of the Tischeriidae species.…”

“…The history of Tischeriidae research is considered to have begun in 1898 with the naming of the family, or even much earlier, some 227 years ago (Dobrynina et al, 2022), with the description of the very first species Tischeria ekebladella (Bjerkander, 1795) that currently belongs to the family. In the Neotropics, the study of the Tischeriidae fauna began in the late 19th-early 20th centuries with descriptions of two species from the Caribbean (Walsingham, 1897), one species from southwestern Mexico (Walsingham, 1914), one species from Guyana, and three species from Ecuador and Peru (Meyrick, 1915) (see Stonis et al, 2019a).…”

The First Attempt to Assess the Taxonomic Diversity of the Nepticulidae of Armenia Resulted in the Discovery of New Species and Cryptic Taxa in the Caucasus

“…Nepticulidae (commonly called pygmy moths) are a cosmopolitan plant-mining lepidopteran family. Currently, it consists of 1014 species worldwide [13,14], including the Diversity 2024, 16, 60 2 of 53 seven new species provided from Armenia in the current paper. The family Nepticulidae includes the world's smallest lepidopterans with a forewing length of less than 1.8 mm or a wingspan of less than 4.0 mm [15].…”

Revealing a Novel Potential Pest of Plum Trees in the Caucasus: A Species Resembling the European Leaf-Mining Stigmella plagicolella, Nepticulidae

“…Nepticulidae (pygmy moths) is a morphologically, ecologically, and genetically distinctive cosmopolitan family of Lepidoptera [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. Recently, the dynamics of species descriptions of the global fauna of pygmy moths were analyzed [ 7 ]. Over the last decade, the number of described Nepticulidae species increased from around 860 species [ 8 ] to 1014 species just before our study [ 6 , 9 ].…”