Publ. 6. VII. 1932. 
PSYCHIDAE. General Topics. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
729 
21. Family: Psychidae. 
We had mentioned already in Vol. II the difficulty of rendering a general survey of the Psychid fa nily, 
because it represents one of the least natural of all the Heterocera families. There are but few clues, mostly 
biological, from which we may conclude which characteristics we are to regard as the expression of close affinity, 
and which as convergency, i. e. a consequence of the regressive metamorphosis brought about by the sacciferous 
life. For further particulars we refer to Vol. XIV (p. 481—483). 
The total number of Psychidae known can also hardly be stated, because some authors include groups 
such as the Talaeporinae and others in the family, whereas other authors detach them as separate families 
and range them at quite a different place. Thus he who includes the genus Acrolophus comprising more than 
100 species in the American Psychidae will arrive at a total number of this family entirely different from that 
obtained by him who includes the Acrolophus in the Tineidae. 
Considering the extent and composition assumed in this work the family contains about 370 Psychid 
species known to-day. Ill species occur in the Indo-Australian fauna, thus a few more than those of the 
palaearctic fauna (106) mentioned in Vol. II, and more than twice as many as are hitherto known from the 
Ethiopian regions (47). —The American region certainly harbours a very great number of Psychidae , but most 
of the country is still quite unexplored with respect to the Psychidae. In Tropical America Psychid sacs are 
to be found most anywhere, but it is very rarely possible to discover the imagines belonging to them. Even if 
the travelling collector found no great difficulties to feed the discovered larva owing to its polypliagy, yet heis 
very rarely able to carry out the breeding. If the specimen found be a it yields nothing whatever, and if it 
be a J, the pupa would have to be continuously controlled, because the insects often try to make use of their 
wings inside the case directly after having developed, and in doing so the wings are so much damaged that the 
imagines can be neither recognized nor described, and often not even classified according to the neuration. 
Only those entomologists who live in the tropics will be successful in this respect, and the relatively large 
number of Psychidae mentioned from Ceylon on the following pages does by no means prove that this island 
abounds remarkably in Psychidae , but rather that very active collectors have been residing there for many 
years and bestowed great care upon breeding the sacciferous larvae they had found. 
Such specialists, however, have not yet been found in Tropical America, for which reason the number 
of Psychidae hitherto known from that region is by far inferior to those ascertained in Europe and also to the 
Indo-Australians dealt with in the following pages; hardly a dozen species have been reported from the 
nearctic parts of America. 
The great phylogenetic age of the Psychid family already mentioned in Vol. II and Vol. XIV makes 
us assume that the Psychidae are also most prominent in the oldest parts of the World. In the very archaic 
region of New Zealand only three species are found — 2 Orophora and 1 Liothula —, but the latter in such vast 
numbers of individuals and so much dispersed over the whole landscape of the New Zealand islands that, 
considering the very scanty lepidopteric fauna of these islands, the collector meets with them more frequently 
than the very numerous Psychid species of Ceylon are met all together in this island. 
In the same way as in New Zealand, the Psychidae of the Australian continent are also remarkably 
well developed, and even in the botanical gardens and nurseries of the Australian towns we may see everywhere 
cases of Oiketicus, frequently of the size and shape of a cigar, hanging down from hedges and shrubs. Even on 
the rocks sloping down to the shore and being splashed with the water of the surging sea Psychid sacs of 
various sizes are to be seen hanging. 
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