# Epimarptidae

Epimarptidae was a former, or possibly a monotypic family of moths in the superfamily Gelechioidea. Depending on source publication, it can be seen as either a synonym of family Batrachedridae, or a unique valid monotypic subfamily of that family.

## Taxonomy and systematics

Epimarptidae was first created as a monotypic family by Edward Meyrick in 1914 to house his new genus Epimarptis, with a single species from India. Epimarptis remained monotypic until a second species was described from Sri Lanka by Meyrick three years later, although in this publication Meyrick decided to reclassify the genus in the family Epermeniidae, an interpretation he maintained in all his subsequent publications. Meyrick described his final third species from Assam in far eastern India in 1931.
The genus remained encompassing three species from the Indian subcontinent until Kazuhiro Sugisima described a new species from Japan in 2004. Specimens of this moth had been collected numerous times since at least 1975, but had remained nameless up until then.
The concept of the superfamily Gelechioidea had begun to crystallise in the late 1960s, and in 1986 Joël Minet was the first to include the genus Epimarptis, unassigned to family, within this grouping. Minet resurrected the family Epimarptidae for the genus in 1990, and was followed in this by Sergey Yu. Sinev in 1992, but in 1998 Ron Hodges reclassified the family Epimarptidae as the subfamily Epimarptinae in the family Batrachedridae, based on a number of shared synapomorphies.
In the 2003, Koster & Sinev's book Microlepidoptera of Europe chose to disregard Hodges, instead continuing to present Batrachedrinae at the rank of family as Batrachedridae, but were unclear about Epimarptis (which doesn't occur in Europe).
In 2004, Lauri Kaila used 193 morphological traits with cladistic analysis under parsimony to infer the phylogeny of the superfamily Gelechioidea. This iniitally included Epimarptis which lacked data many of the stated morphological characters for their encoded species Epimarptis philocoma, as the genus had not been seen again since Meyrick, let alone studied. Due to this incompleteness, Epimarptis was then excluded from some subsequent analyses, but when included, might belong to, or allied to, one of a number of different genera depending on the analytical details, which rendered a collapse of resolution in the basal clades of his Coleophoridae sensu lato. The genus was, however, clearly included in his Coleophoridae sensu lato, along with the family Coleophoridae sensu stricto, Hodges' subfamily Batrachedrinae and the genera Coelopoeta, Stathmopoda and perhaps Idioglossa. Kaila is careful to state that he was not formally revising Hodges' classification in his paper. When Sugisima published his new Epimarptis species a few months after Kaila's analyses, he attempted to fill in some of the missing morphological data in order to help resolve where the genus should be classified. However, the new data failed to give any more resolution, and in fact made the classification of Epimarptis within the Coleophoridae sensu lato possibly less certain, let alone whether it should be placed in the Batrachedridae or not. Sugisima mentions he finds the synapomorphies used by Hodges to define this latter family and its subfamilies in 1998 questionable in light of the further morphological observations made by him and Kaila.
In Zhi-Qiang Zhang's 2011 attempt to list all the known animal species of Earth, van Nieukerken et al., the authors of the section on Lepidoptera, were aware of Hodges' 1998 work but chose to repudiate it, and re-recognised Epimarptidae as a family again. Four species in the genus Epimarptis were still counted as belonging to the family at the time.
In 2014 work by Heikkilä et al. using cladistics essentially bolstered Hodges' 1998 viewpoint, synonymising this family with Batrachedridae.
* Epimarptis Meyrick, 1914
** Epimarptis hiranoi Sugisima, 2004 - Japan (Honshu)
** Epimarptis isoloxa Meyrick, 1931 - India (Assam)
** Epimarptis philocoma Meyrick, 1914 - India (Mumbai)
** Epimarptis septicodes Meyrick, 1917 - Sri Lanka (Maskeliya)
The species Houdinia flexissima Hoare, Dugdale & Watts, 2006 from New Zealand appears to be very similar and may be a close ally, along with undescribed species from New Zealand and Australia. Hoare et al (2006). classified their species in the family Batrachedridae, as opposed to the Epimarptidae, due to context from Kaila's 2004 studies, but it might be placed in the Epimarptidae, or at least the subfamily Epimarptinae sensu Hodges, depending on the taxonomy used.
Otherwise, Sugisima (2004) suggested that it is very probable that other species of the genus have already been collected and await description, especially in collections in Japan and Europe.
More recently, a subsequent study by Wang & Li, 2020 have again proposed restoration of Epimarptidae as a valid family, including genus Idioglossa.

## Ecology

Almost absolutely nothing is known about the ecology of the family. Epimarptis hiranoi was mostly collected at low altitudes, E. philocoma presumably as well, but E. septicodes was collected at relatively high elevations. The moths all appear to be night-fliers. In E. hiranoi, imagoes are only known to fly from mid-June to mid-July, with a peak in the second quarter. The larvae of none of the species have ever been seen (or recognised as such), and the life histories or host plants of none of the species are known.