Description of a new species of Aureopterix from the Bach-Ma National Park, VIetnam. AUREOPTERIX

We report some surprising recent distributional range extensions of one extant genus and two morefamilies of primitive moths discovered in amber fossils from South-east Asia which were previously onlyknown from Australia and/or the southwestern Pacific, with the possible exception of an undescribed Siberianfossil attributed to Lophocoronidae. During entomological field work in rain forests of central Vietnam a newspecies of Micropterigidae was discovered. It is described herein as Aureopterix bachmaensis sp. nov. basedon male and female specimens collected at light in the Bach-Ma National Park. The identification was corrob-orated by a molecular analysis. This is the first record of this genus in the Northern Hemisphere, previouslythought to be restricted to the Australian Region (including New Caledonia). First results of investigationsof Burmese amber inclusions now reveal the presence of the Australian Region families Agathiphagidae andLophocoronidae in the Cretaceous of Asia. The fossil taxon Agathiphagama perdita gen. nov., sp. nov. is es-tablished on the basis of two females and this is assigned to Agathiphagidae. The fossil genus Acanthocoronagen. nov. is established in Lophocoronidae and includes seven species described here as A. skalskii sp. nov.,A. bowangi sp. nov., A. muelleri sp. nov., A. kuranishii sp. nov., A. sattleri sp. nov., A. spinifera sp. nov. andA. wichardi sp. nov. The new species can be distinguished by the male genitalia which are illustrated togetherwith wing venation and other morphological characters. The disjunct ranges of these taxa are discussed in ahistorical biogeographic context. Vicariance and dispersal hypotheses explaining the disjunct pattern are discussed. The discovery of these new species suggests a broader ancestral range of Aureopterix, Agathiphagidae and Lophocoronidae. Their extant ranges in the southern Hemisphere may be regarded as remnants or relicts of a wider distribution in the Mesozoic, or at least in the case of Aureopterix they could be the results of recent or ancient dispersal processes, since the calibration of molecular splits does not so far accord with plate tectonics.