Two Southern Hemisphere species on two continents, one rarely collected, one undescribed, form a moth family without hearing organs (Lepidoptera, Geometroidea, Apoprogonidae stat. rev.)

Abstract

The systematic placement of the enigmatic South African moth Apoprogones hesperistis Hampson, which superficially resembles hesperiid skippers and sematurid moths, has long been controversial. Its rarity has hindered detailed morphological study, and the absence of fresh material has precluded molecular analyses. We investigated its phylogenetic position using non‐destructive DNA extraction from the holotype collected in 1902, followed by museomic sequencing, and complemented these data with non‐destructive micro‐CT–based morphological examination. In a first analysis based on a Macroheterocera dataset including mitogenomes of 114 taxa, A. hesperistis was placed within Geometroidea as sister to an undescribed lineage from southern South America. A second, Geometroidea‐focused phylogenomic analysis of 45 taxa confirmed this placement, recovering A. hesperistis within the lineage of geometroid families lacking tympanic hearing organs, again as sister to the same undescribed South American lineage. Together, these taxa formed a clade positioned between the Southeast Asian families Pseudobistonidae and Epicopeiidae. We describe a new genus, Ona Sihvonen, Hausmann & Brehm gen. n ., with Ona australis Sihvonen, Hausmann & Brehm sp. n . from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, as type species. Apoprogones and Ona are classified in the revived family Apoprogonidae, each representing a monotypic subfamily—Apoprogoninae and Onainae—to reflect their distinctiveness. We further show that Geometroidea comprises both tympanic and non‐tympanic lineages, with 99.4% of described species possessing hearing organs. We hypothesize that the abdominal hearing organ, particularly the geometrid‐specific structure called ansa, may represent a key innovation promoting diversification of the lineage post Cretaceous‐Tertiary (K‐T) boundary ca 66 Mya.