# Hepialid Moth Diversity in Australia Further Highlighted by Five New Species in the Endemic Genus Abantiades Herrich-Schäffer (Lepidoptera: Hepialidae)

## TL;DR

This paper describes five new species of Hepialid moths in the Australian genus Abantiades and uses DNA barcoding to clarify their taxonomy.

## Contribution

The study introduces five new Abantiades species and provides updated DNA barcode data for the genus.

## Key findings

- Five new Abantiades species were identified in Australia using morphological and DNA data.
- Antennal structure was found to be a key but historically problematic diagnostic trait in the genus.
- DNA barcoding confirmed the distinctiveness of the new species within Abantiades.

## Abstract

Hepialidae is an ancient family with some of the largest and heaviest moths known worldwide. They are an iconic species, often referred to as ‘ghost’, ‘swift’ or ‘rain’ moths, and can be found emerging as adults in their thousands after significant rain. The family is well represented in Australia, and we describe five new species in the endemic genus Abantiades. We also further clarify one important taxonomic character for the genus and provide the most up to date DNA ‘barcode’ analysis for all known Abantiades species.

We describe five new species of Abantiades from Australia, four from Western Australia (WA) and one from south-east Queensland. Of the four WA species, three are from the Geraldton Sandplains biogeographic region (Abantiades profundus sp. nov., A. kolpodes sp. nov., and A. patella sp. nov.), and the fourth (A. lepusaures sp. nov.) was found in the Eastern Goldfields region. The Queensland species (A. incognito sp. nov.) comes from the south-eastern Queensland biogeographic region. Our five new species demonstrated the importance of wing morphology, genitalia and antennal structure in diagnosing Abantiades species. However, antennal structure as a diagnostic character defining these species highlighted historical problems that, in part, were used to erect Trictena and Bordaia, recently synonymised into Abantiades. To explore this further, we used mtDNA COI ‘barcode’ sequences and compared our new species with all currently available species for the genus Abantiades.