Publ 23. V. 1029 
PSYCHIDAE. General Topics. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
481 
19. Family: Psychidae. 
The most interesting family of the Psychidae has been exhaustively dealt with in Vol. II (p. 351 — 353), 
and in respect of its phylogeny and vast range we may refer to that volume. And we may add here that the 
number of African Psychidae known has been quadrupled since (to about 50 species). This number, however, 
is by no means final, and there must be many more to be discovered, since numerous sacs have been obtained 
from the Ethiopian region, the imagines of which are still unknown. 
In judging the abundance of the African Psychid fauna we must take into account that owing to the 
insignificant appearance of most of the $$ and to the maggot-shape of all the these macrolepidoptera are 
very much neglected by tropical collectors. They are rather seldom found in the open nature, which fact is 
also proved in Central Europe where, in summer, we may come across numbers of sacs hanging about everywhere 
in gardens, fields, and at the skirts of forests, on the banks of rivers and rocky walls, whilst the imagines are 
of a relatively very rare occurrence, unless they be sought for. Many resemble the microlepidoptera in life, 
and it is for this reason, too, that they are disregarded bv many tropical collectors. Another drawback is the 
fact that there are but few places in the Ethiopian region, where the breeding of sacciferous Psychidae, which 
mostly takes up much time, might be tried. We may imagine the way a collection of Psychidae would look, 
after all breeding attempts having been neglected and the time of collecting confined in Europe or North 
America, if the collectors would restrict themselves to merely capturing these lepidoptera; the collection obtained 
thereby would be entirely incomplete. 
As in other primitive lepidoptera ( Hepialidae, Micropterygidae, Adelidae) and above all the primitive 
insects of other orders (Ephemeridae), the occurrence of the imagines is temporally very limited, often confined 
to hours *), and presumably for this reason they frequently occur in crowds. For months a district may be 
scoured without meeting any Psychidae, when all of a sudden hosts of swarming $<$ will be discovered on 
insignificant meadows or mountain-slopes, which, after few hours, have disappeared for the rest of the year. 
One may wander about the alpine meadows of the Apennines for hours and days without getting sight of any 
specimen of Phalactropteryx apiformis, until a chance provides the collector with a female ready for copulation 
and encircled by a swarm of males **). These occasional meetings as well as the frequently enormous number 
of larval sacs wandering about show how very much the part the Psychidae play in the household of Nature 
is undervalued, if we confine our conclusions to the presence of male Psychidae in the explorers’ yields and in 
non-specialised lepidoptera! collections. 
In Vol. II we had already stated that the systematic position of the Psychidae is uncertain. In very 
rare cases we are able to ascertain which of the peculiarities deviating from most of the other lepidoptera! 
groups are due to ontogenetic arrears and which are attributable to secondary re-formations caused by the 
sac-life ***). It may be that their formerly assumed close homogeneousness with the Talaeporiidae is to be 
regarded more as the effect of convergency, whereas a great resemblance to the Hypopta may be the expression 
of real relationship. In so far as the Cossidae and Metarbelidae (Arhelidae ) are more correctly considered as groups 
*) Standfuss observed, the death of a male in the act of copulation with another female, the male having lived for 
hardly one hour. 
**) According to Standfuss, the human perspiration is said also to allure the males of this Psychid species. 
***) The conclusion that such a re-formation took place here in a lepidopteron which had formerly also been winged 
in the female, is corroborated by the observation that wing-cases were discovered on the pupae of entirely wingless females 
of Psychidae (in Psychidea and Fumea ). C'f. Berl. Ent. Ztschr. 1909, p. 90. 
XIV 
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