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The family Lecithoceridae is not well represented in the Palaearctic region, with very few taxa in Europe. Here we describe a new genus and species of lecithocerid moth, Xenotorodor stygioxanthus Sterling, Lees & Grundy, gen. nov., sp. nov. The taxon represents a subfamily new to Europe. We consider placement of the genus within Crocanthinae or Torodorinae. We place it in Torodorinae, notwithstanding the reduced gnathos in the male genitalia. DNA barcodes suggest that the taxon belongs within a distal clade of this subfamily. They are over 9.2% pairwise divergent from any hitherto cleanly sequenced Lepidoptera taxon and over 10.1% from nearest taxonomically identified neighbours in Neighbor Joining and ML trees. Characteristics of the DNA barcode and morphology of this new taxon suggest that refinement of synapomorphies for the family and two subfamilies is needed. We have nearly 100 records for this new species since 2020, all from a small area of Southern Spain, close to the Straits of Gibraltar. The life history and early stages of the species are unknown.

Four new species of Filatima Busck, 1939 are described from Central Asia: Filatima armatasp. nov. (Iran), F. subarmatasp. nov. (Pakistan, Iran), F. afghanasp. nov. (Afghanistan), and F. kariisp. nov. (Tajikistan). The hitherto unknown female of Filatima multicornuta Bidzilya & Nupponen, 2018 is described. Recorded to occur for the first time are Filatima textorella (Chrétien, 1908) from North Macedonia and Turkey, F. pallipalpella (Snellen, 1884) from Kyrgyzstan, and Filatima zagulajevi Anikin & Piskunov, 1996 from Kazakhstan. Filatima fontisella Lvovsky & Piskunov, 1989 is removed from the list of Russian Gelechiidae due to re-identification of the only record as F. multicornuta. An annotated checklist of Palaearctic Filatima species is provided.

Despite being the second largest group of vascular plants, ferns are scarcely reported being fed by insects when compared to angiosperms. Within these fern-feeding insects, lepidopterans are poorly represented and are restricted only to specific groups in this speciose order. The consumers specialising on fern spores are even scarcer in the order, with the majority being consumers of vegetative structures. Amongst the fern-spore-feeding Lepidoptera, Stathmopodidae is the family with the highest species diversity, even with a subfamily, Cyprininae Sinev, 2015, specialising on fern spores. However, fern-spore-feeding habit is not restricted to this subfamily. To understand the evolution of fern-spore-feeding within this family and to increase our knowledge of insect-fern evolution, detailed studies on fern-spore feeding stathmopodids are essential. The present study rediscovered a rare, fern-spore-feeding, stathmopodid micro-moth, Stathmopoda tacita (Meyrick, 1913), which has not been formally recorded or identified for more than 100 years. We documented the life history of this species and identified several species of Pyrrosia (Polypodiaceae, Platycerioideae) as host for the moth’s larvae. A re-description of the fern-feeding moth is also provided as the original description is obscure in terms of character diagnosis.

Two new species of Harpalyce are described from Cuba, H. revolutasp. nov. from a serpentine area in the northern part of E. Cuba and H. marianensissp. nov. from calcareous areas in the southern part of E. Cuba. Both have relatively small flowers, with an up to 6 mm long standard, and 2–3 mm long wings. Harpalyce marianensis is further characterized by strongly suberous (corky) young branches of a spongy consistence, deeply furrowed longitudinally, and by leaflets covered with a particular type of orange, apparently disk-shaped, sessile glands abaxially. Harpalyce revoluta, moreover, has suborbicular or broadly elliptic leaflets with a strongly recurved or sometimes revolute margin, secondary veins inconspicuous on either side; the foliar glands, by their morphology and anatomy, are of a different type. An epitype is designated for the name Harpalyce and its type, H. formosa; the distribution of both new species and their close relatives is mapped, and an updated identification key is offered, to cater for all 16 currently recognised Cuban species.

Megacraspedus peslieri was described from the Pyrenees in 2018 and subsequently also discovered at a few localities in the northern Cottian Alps (Italy). The hitherto unknown female was collected in these localities after a targeted search. As with some other representatives of the genus, the female is flightless and shows a strikingly strong reduction of the wings (brachyptery). Whereas the forewings are significantly shortened and narrowed, the hindwings are strongly reduced. Both the external morphology and the genitalia of the female are described and illustrated in detail, together with previously unpublished photographs of live adults of both sexes. The identification of specimens from the Alps as well as of the male and female were determined by means of a DNA barcode comparison with the holotype.

Genitalia morphology of a new gnorimoschemine micromoth (Lepidoptera, Gelechiidae, Gelechiinae, Gnorimoschemini) discovered in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile, fits the original description of Scrobipalpulopsis Povolný, 1987, a genus previously synonymized with Scrobipalpula Povolný, 1964. The generic assignment of the new species was assessed using a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis based on mitochondrial DNA sequences. The new species, the type species of Scrobipalpulopsis and another species recently transferred from this genus to Scrobipalpula were grouped in a monophyletic cluster distantly related to that of Scrobipalpula. Furthermore, an ancestral state reconstruction analysis suggested that the presence of two pairs of processes on the vinculum in the male genitalia represents a synapomorphy for the cluster of three species. Accordingly, the revalidation of Scrobipalpulopsis gen. rev. (type species Phthorimaea stirodes Meyrick, 1931) and the reinstated combination Scrobipalpulopsis lutescella (Clarke, 1934) comb. rev. are proposed. The micromoth Scrobipalpulopsis aguilaensis sp. nov., whose larvae feed on inflorescences of the Chilean endemic Glandularia gynobasis (Verbenaceae), is described and illustrated. Genetic divergence with congenerics was found to be 2.5–4.4% (K2P). This discovery represents the first record of Scrobipalpulopsis from the Atacama Desert.

The taxonomy of the Caryocolum tricolorella species complex, an informal subsection of the diverse Caryocolum interalbicella species group, is revised and four species are separated from DNA barcodes of the mitochondrial COI (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1) gene and adult morphology: C. tricolorella (Haworth, 1812), C. fibigerium Huemer, 1988, C. herwigvanstaaisp. nov., and C. olekarsholtisp. nov. These species show a vicariant distribution pattern, with C. tricolorella widely distributed in Central and Northern Europe, C. fibigerium restricted to the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, C. herwigvanstaaisp. nov. to the Italian Peninsula, and C. olekarsholtisp. nov. to the Balkans. All species are described in detail, and the adults and genitalia of both sexes are illustrated.

Host plants and cases of several species in the genus Coleophora Hübner, 1822 have remained unknown until now, while the latter structures provide important characters for identification. Host plants and cases of Coleophora lessinica Baldizzone, 1980 and Coleophora impalella Toll, 1961 were discovered by the authors and are presented here for the first time. New data on the distribution and biology of the two species in Hungary are given. Coleophora lessinica is recorded as new for the fauna of Romania. DNA barcode sequencing was performed for both Coleophora species and loaded into the BOLD System and to GenBank.

Two new species, Urodeta falcatasp. nov. from Ghana and U. bisignasp. nov. from Democratic Republic of the Congo are described. The habitus and genitalia are diagnosed and illustrated in detail. Identification keys to the Afrotropical species of the genus Urodeta, based on male and female genitalia, are provided.

The field of molecular phylogenetics is being revolutionised with next-generation sequencing technologies making it possible to sequence large numbers of genomes for non-model organisms ushering us into the era of phylogenomics. The current challenge is no longer how to get enough data, but rather how to analyse the data and how to assess the support for the inferred phylogeny. We focus on one of the largest animal groups on the planet – butterflies and moths (order Lepidoptera). We clearly demonstrate that there are unresolved issues in the inferred phylogenetic relationships of the major lineages, despite several recent phylogenomic studies of the group. We assess the potential causes and consequences of the conflicting phylogenetic hypotheses. With a dataset consisting of 331 protein-coding genes and the alignment length over 290 000 base pairs, including 200 taxa representing 81% of lepidopteran superfamilies, we compare phylogenetic hypotheses inferred from amino acid and nucleotide alignments. The resulting two phylogenies are discordant, especially with respect to the placement of the superfamily Gelechioidea, which is likely due to compositional bias of both the nucleotide and amino acid sequences. With a series of analyses, we dissect our dataset and demonstrate that there is sufficient phylogenetic signal to resolve much of the lepidopteran tree of life. Overall, the results from the nucleotide alignment are more robust to the various perturbations of the data that we carried out. However, the lack of support for much of the backbone within Ditrysia makes the current butterfly and moth tree of life still unresolved. We conclude that taxon sampling remains an issue even in phylogenomic analyses, and recommend that poorly sampled highly diverse groups, such as Gelechioidea in Lepidoptera, should receive extra attention in the future.