Overview
Five species are white with distinct, fuscous, transverse bands or with a dark suffusion in the middle of the wing; one species has uniform blackish brown fore wings and flies in mid summer while all other species fly during April and May. Males come to light early in the evening; a female taken at light came late in the evening. The immature stages are unknown but the piercing ovipositor suggests that the larvae are internal borers or leaf-miners and the absence of mandibular muscles in the adult moth shows that the pupa must be adecticous. [Common 1973; Nielsen and Kristensen 1996].
Description
Very small; head with long, raised, slender hair-scales; ocelli and chaetosemata absent; antennae filiform, to middle of fore wing, with slender scales scattered over entire surface of flagellar segments, articulation of antenna base dicondylous; labrum without pilifers; mandibles simple lobes, devoid of muscles; proboscis short and delicate, 0.6 times head capsule height, without intrinsic musculature; maxillary palps 5-segmented, flexed at joints 1/2 and 3/4; labial palps 3-segmented, 0.6 times length of maxillary palps; fore tibial epiphysis absent, tibial spurs 0-2-4; fore wing with small jugum, with only one type of scale; fore wing with Sc forked, with or without cross-vein Sc-Rs, R
2
and R
3
stalked, R
4
and R
5
stalked, R
5
to termen, inter Rs cross-vein present or absent, M-stem present in cell, CuP present, A veins vestigial at base, with or without CuP-A cross-vein; hind wing with Sc and R
1
simple and CuP present; abdomen with paired S5 gland processes; male genitalia with paired, rounded dorsum lobes with prominent sensilla, valvae bilobed; female with piercing ovipositor. Immature stages unknown.
Distribution
The Lophocoronidae are a small family endemic to Australia, with only six species in the genus
Lophocorona
. They occur in southern Australia in low-rainfall areas from west of Coolgardie (W.A.) along the Great Australian Bight to the Eyre Peninsula (S.A.) in mallee and dry sclerophyll forest, at Canberra (A.C.T.) and northwest of Wollongong (N.S.W.) in dry sclerophyll forest.