Revision of the genus Xylomoia Staudinger (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), with descriptions of two new species

Abstract

Seven species are included in the genus Xylomoia Staudinger, two of which are new: X. retinax sp.n. from the Novosibirsk area, Western Siberia, and from the Chelyabinsk area, southern Ural Mountains, and X. stangelmaieri sp.n. from Caorle, Venezia Giulia, on the Adriatic coast. A North American species, Chortodes didonea (Smith) comb.n., is removed from the genus. According to a cladistic analysis, the genus Xylomoia comprises one plesiomorphic species group, the chagnoni group, and two apomorphic groups: the graminea and strix groups. The latter are exclusively temperate Palaearctic. Xylomoia chagnoni (Barnes & McDunnough) is the only Nearctic species of the genus, and the loosely related X. apameaoides (Hacker) was recently described from Turkey. In geographical isolation, these two species have retained many ancestral features. In the more central area, the common ancestor of the graminea and strix groups has evolved into at least five species. The locality and rarity of the species of Xylomoia seemingly result from adaptation of the species to moist habitats, the larvae probably bore inside grass stems (the case of X. chagnoni). What are called lock‐and‐key mechanisms may lead to the use of non‐independent character states in a cladistic analysis; particularly in the case of homoplasy this kind of double‐weighting may result in erroneous cladograms. In Xylomoia, deleting female lock‐and‐keys affected only the number of cladograms produced, whereas omitting the corresponding male characters had profound effects on the cladogram.