Schachat Sandra R, Gibbs George W
Mississippi Entomological Museum, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA; Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.
School of Biological Sciences , Victoria University , PO Box 600, Wellington 6140 , New Zealand.
R Soc Open Sci. 2016 Oct 5;3(10):160453. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160453. eCollection 2016 Oct.
Details of the ancestral groundplan of wing venation in moths remain uncertain, despite approximately a century of study. Here, we describe a 3-branched subcostal vein, a 5-branched medial vein and a 2-branched cubitus posterior vein on the forewing of Dumbleton 1952 from Vanuatu. Such veins had not previously been described in any Lepidoptera. Because wing veins are typically lost during lepidopteran evolutionary history, rarely-if ever-to be regained, the venation of probably represents the ancestral character state for moths. Wing venation is often used to identify fossil insects as moths, because wing scales are not always preserved; the presence of a supposedly trichopteran 3-branched subcostal vein in crown Lepidoptera may decrease the certainty with which certain amphiesmenopteran fossils from the Mesozoic can be classified. And because plesiomorphic veins can influence the development of lepidopteran wing patterns even if not expressed in the adult wing, the veins described here may determine the location of wing pattern elements in many lepidopteran taxa.
尽管经过了大约一个世纪的研究，但蛾类翅脉的原始基本结构细节仍不明确。在此，我们描述了来自瓦努阿图的1952年邓布尔顿标本前翅上的一条三分叉的亚前缘脉、一条五分叉的中脉和一条二分叉的肘后脉。此前在任何鳞翅目中都未曾描述过这样的翅脉。由于翅脉在鳞翅目昆虫的进化历史中通常会消失，极少（如果有的话）会重新出现，所以[该标本的]翅脉可能代表了蛾类的原始特征状态。翅脉常被用于将化石昆虫鉴定为蛾类，因为翅鳞并不总是能被保存下来；在冠群鳞翅目中出现一条据推测属于毛翅目的三分叉亚前缘脉，可能会降低对某些中生代两栖类化石进行分类的确定性。而且，由于原始形态的翅脉即使在成虫翅上不表达，也可能影响鳞翅目翅脉图案的发育，所以这里描述的翅脉可能决定了许多鳞翅目类群中翅脉图案元素的位置。
