John W. Brown, ed.
Apollo Books, Stenstrup, Denmark, 2005
741 pp., hardcover, $174.50
ISBN 87-88757-41-2

This, the first volume in the Apollo World Catalogue series devoted to Microlepidoptera, also is the first attempt to catalog the world fauna of any major family of Microlepidoptera since the Oecophoridae (sens. lat.) by Gaede in 1938-1939 in the Lepidopterorum Catalogus. The last previous world catalog of Tortricidae was that of Meyrick in 1913, which treated only the Tortricinae of current concepts. In 1980 in Annual Review of Entomology (Powell 1980), I guessed there were >4,000 described species of Tortricidae, which was true but woefully conservative; by 1991 John Brown and I increased the estimate to >5,000 species; and Heppner the same year tallied 6,683! Several hundred new species have been described since then, but our naiveté may be prophetic of the state of world cataloging of Lepidoptera, one of the most popular orders among contemporary systematists—this catalogue lists just >9,000 species. With this total, the Tortricoidea, which includes the single family Tortricidae, ranks second only to Gelechioidea in species richness among microlepidopteran clades.

The format is dictionary-like, an alphabetical listing by generic names, with the species currently assigned to each genus listed alphabetically, along with their synonyms. For each species-group, name Brown et al. provide the current and original generic assignment, original literature citation, type locality, sex of the holotype, and location of the type specimen if known. Under the heading for each genus, its original literature citation, and those of its synonyms are given, along with the subfamilial and tribal placement. There is a separate table of the subfamilies and tribes and their synonyms, indicating consensus opinion on relationships among the higher categories. In addition, there is an index of genus (in capital letters) and species names, including synonyms and homonyms, all in italics (i.e., not differentiated from valid names)—>16,000 names. Hence, this format departs from the style usually used in catalogs and checklists, which arrange the entrees hierarchically by taxa, i.e., family-subfamily-tribegenus-species, often with a number assigned to each species. Such catalogs serve several purposes: a provide a key to the nomeclature and literature; databases and museum collections can be arranged by the phylogenetic sequence, enabling putatively related taxa to be compared easily; and they provide a count of species per genus or higher taxon.

An advantage of the tortricid catalog is quick retrieval of information when a researcher knows the genus or species name or wants the generic assignment, author, original literature, date, synonyms, and op on. If, however, he or she wants to know something about species of related genera, or the number of genera or species in a given tribe or subfamily, a labor-intensive, several-step approach is required. For example, if a researcher needs to know numbers of species in a subfamily or tribe for biodiversity analysis or their numbers in regions of the world for biogeographical purposes, he or she will have to scan all the genera—1,000 or more—and tally them by tribes, then abstract the relevant species information.

Larvae of nearly all Tortricidae are plant feeders, and the family is one of the most important insect lineages in terms of human economy, including among its ranks numerous species of dramatic and sometimes worldwide concern. Many species are external foliage feeders, as leafrollers, but the larvae of most are endophagous, as root, stem, fruit, or seed borers. Among the most notorious are the codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.), whose larvae are the ubiquitous worms in apples; the spruce budworms [Choristoneura fumiferana(Clemens) complex], which are the most destructive foliage-feeding insects of coniferous forests in North America; the light brown apple moth [Epiphyas postvittana (Walker)] in Australia; fruittree leafrollers [Archips argyrospilus (Walker) complex] in North America; pea moth [Cydia nigricana (F.)]; as well as other conifer pests in the Holarctic, including larch and spruce budworms (Zieraphera spp.), several seed and cone borers (Eucosma and Cydia spp.), and pine tip borers (Rhyacionia spp.). Therefore, these dedicated taxonomists have provided an invaluable resource to a broad audience of agricultural and forest entomologists and ecologists as well as to the rest of us systematists, who know cataloguing needs to be done but don't want to do it. But, there could have been considerable added value if the genera had been arranged by subfamily and tribe, even alphabetically.

References
Powell J. A. Evolution of larval food preferences in Microlepidoptera. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 1980, 25:133-159.

J. A. Powell
Essig Museum of Entomology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3112
E-mail: powellj@nature.berkeley.edu

Annals of Entomological Society of America
Vol. 100, No. 1, January 2007, Page 92-93