Agaristinae

Keegan, Kevin L., Rota, Jadranka, Zahiri, Reza, Zilli, Alberto, Wahlberg, Niklas, Schmidt, B. Christian, Lafontaine, J. Donald, Goldstein, Paul Z. & Wagner, David L., 2021, Toward a Stable Global Noctuidae (Lepidoptera) Taxonomy, Insect Systematics and Diversity (AIFB) 5 (3), pp. 1-24 : 17

Agaristinae

We added five Nearctic genera, long recognized as members of Agaristinae (e.g., by Hodges et al. 1983), to the dataset of Keegan et al. (2019) and confirmed them as agaristines (BS = 100, SH = 100, UF = 100): Alypiodes Grote, 1883 ; Eudryas Boisduval, 1836 ; Eupseudomorpha Dyar, 1893 ; Psychomorpha Harris, 1839 ; and Xerociris Cockerell, 1904 ( Fig. 5). The branch leading to the crown node of this subfamily is one of the longer such branches in our study. Although our results do not suggest more than a single tribe, there are agaristine genera from other biogeographic realms of the world that superficially seem quite divergent from the genera treated here ( Becker 2010).

Agaristinae grouped with Oncocnemidinae with weak support (BS = 50, SH = 52.2, UF = 61), mirroring the findings in Mitchell et al. (2006) and Keegan et al. (2019). Interestingly, oncocnemidines and agaristines share an uncommon type of thoracico-abdominal union in which lateral invaginations of the A1 tergum, near where it joins to the thorax, extend so deep into the abdomen that they almost meet and form a hole passing laterally through the abdomen— such that light passes through the diaphanous septum separating the two invaginations ( Troubridge 2008, J.D.L. unpublished data). As Troubridge (2008) mentioned, this condition is also found in unrelated genera like Annaphila Grote, 1873 (Stiriinae) .