76 
Psyche 
[June 
series of unidentified, field-collected larvae of one or more living 
Australian species which I have studied, and it would be difficult 
to separate the amber specimens from these living forms. Although 
the mature-sized larvae of my Australian series have heads which 
are distinctly longer than broad, the smaller larvae of this series, 
presumably second-instar, have more quadrate head capsules like 
the two amber specimens. Whether this is a feature of taxonomic 
importance or is simply a reflection of a pattern of ontogenetic 
allometry occurring in the Psychopsidae cannot now be known. 
Tillyard (1918b) reports that the larvae of Australian forms 
are to be found in the deep crevices of the bark of living trees of 
a number of species and that they are especially frequent in the 
vicinity of sap flows where they presumably seize, as prey, other 
insects visiting the fermenting sap. Similar habits in the larvae of 
the amber species should have made them especially liable to entrap- 
ment in the resin which produced the amber and this perhaps accounts 
for the capture of the larvae discussed here. 
Recent classifications of the families of living Neuroptera have 
usually treated the Psychopsidae as belonging to the same super- 
family as the Hemerobiidae (Withycombe, 1925; Tillyard, 1926; 
Handlirsch, 1936; Killington, 1936; Riek, 1970), although Withy- 
combe and Riek realized that such a classification of this odd family 
was an oversimplification. The Psychopsidae and its close Mesozoic 
relatives have also been placed in the Hemerobioidea by Martynova 
(1962) in her classification of the fossil forms. In Tillyard’s final 
statement on the question (1932) he considered the Psychopsidae 
to comprise a very specialized side branch of their own. 
I have elsewhere (1964 and MS in preparation) noted that the 
larvae of the Psychopsidae are structurally of the same, unique form 
as are those of the families of the Myrmeleontoidea, complete to 
such details as the very unusual specializations of the tentorium, 
maxillae, and labium. It would seem that these specializations rule 
out any close evolutionary relationship of the Hemerobiidae, or its 
true allies, to the Psychopsidae. Future attempts to trace the origins 
of the Psychopsidae and its Mesozoic relatives, or the origins of such 
phylogenetically important myrmeleontoids as the Nymphidae, must 
take these distinctive features of larval morphology into account. 
Literature Cited 
Adams, P. A. 
1958. Studies in the Neuroptera, with special reference to wing struc- 
