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Superfamily: Pyraloidea

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Pyraloid moths (snout moths) are a moth superfamily. The group is split into two families: Crambidae and Pyralidae. Crambidae form one of the most diverse families of moths in New Zealand, with an estimated 238 species (including well characterised unnamed taxa), whereas the Pyralidae family is very poorly represented in New Zealand, and almost all species are adventive.

Missing species

Apart from unnamed species and species recorded only from the Kermadecs, a few species are not yet illustrated on the Pyraloidea pages. These fall into two categories:

  1. Species for which it has not yet been possible to find or borrow good enough specimens for photography: Crambinae: Glaucocharis planetopa; Orocrambus clarkei; O. dicrenellus; O. eximius; Glaphyriinae: Hellula hydralis; Spilomelinae: Mnesictena antipodea.
  2. Species of dubious taxonomic status, i.e. named species lacking clear diagnostic features and not separated as species in NZAC: Crambinae: Orocrambus punctellus(possibly a synonym of O. vulgaris); O. sophronellus(probably a synonym of O. corruptus); Spilomelinae: Mnesictena adversa(not clearly distinguished from M. notata).

Note: missing species of Scopariinae are discussed on the page Notes on Scopariinae.

Acknowledgements.

Many thanks to Birgit Rhode (NZAC), who put an immense amount of work and hard-won skill into photographing and editing images of the hundreds of specimens in the image galleries. Brian Patrick kindly compiled most of the Threatened Species factsheets. I am also especially grateful to Maia Vaswani, who visited the British Museum (Natural History), London, on my behalf and took images of genitalia of key taxa, mostly Scopariinae, which greatly assisted in identifications of specimens imaged, and clarified the correct application of many names. She also very kindly dissected the holotype of Homoeosoma ischnomorphaMeyrick. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Terrestrial and Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (TFBIS) Programme towards this project (TFBIS number 267). The TFBIS Programme is funded by the New Zealand Government to help achieve the goals of the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, and is administered by the Department of Conservation.