Abstract
Details of the ancestral groundplan of wing venation in moths remain uncertain, despite approximately a century of study. Here, we describe a 3-branched subcostal vein, a 5-branched medial vein and a 2-branched cubitus posterior vein on the forewing of Agathiphaga vitiensis Dumbleton 1952 from Vanuatu. Such veins had not previously been described in any Lepidoptera. Because wing veins are typically lost during lepidopteran evolutionary history, rarely—if ever—to be regained, the venation of A. vitiensis probably represents the ancestral character state for moths. Wing venation is often used to identify fossil insects as moths, because wing scales are not always preserved; the presence of a supposedly trichopteran 3-branched subcostal vein in crown Lepidoptera may decrease the certainty with which certain amphiesmenopteran fossils from the Mesozoic can be classified. And because plesiomorphic veins can influence the development of lepidopteran wing patterns even if not expressed in the adult wing, the veins described here may determine the location of wing pattern elements in many lepidopteran taxa.
Highlights
Perhaps because moths have a depauperate fossil record [1] and many early diverging lineages remain undiscovered or undescribed [2], the primitive wing venation groundplan for Lepidoptera is not yet fully understood
A wing slide was made from Specimen A (ANIC 8904 W), because this specimen initially appeared to have the same forewing venation as A. queenslandensis: two branches of Sc, four branches of M and an unbranched cubitus posterior (CuP)
The forewings of A. vitiensis specimens from Vanuatu contain three veins that had not been previously described in any moths: a 3-branched Sc vein, a 5-branched M vein and a 2-branched CuP vein
Summary
Perhaps because moths have a depauperate fossil record [1] and many early diverging lineages remain undiscovered or undescribed [2], the primitive wing venation groundplan for Lepidoptera is not yet fully understood. Studies of primitive lepidopteran wing venation were common approximately one century ago [3,4], when the three most basal families of.
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