Systematic study on the genus Dinica Gozmány (Lepidoptera: Tineidae) from China

Gozmany (1965) established the genus Dinica, with Homalopsycha hyacinthopa Meyrick, 1932 collected from Uganda as the type species. In the same paper, he transferred to Dinica the species Tinea aspirans Meyrick, 1920 described from Kenya and T. orphnospila Meyrick, 1934 recorded from Uganda. Subsequently he described one species D. diana Gozmany, 1966 from Uganda and another species D. vulcanica Gozmany, 2004 from Namibia. Petersen (1983) reported two Asian species, D. endochrysa (Meyrick, 1935) from Japan and D. dierli Petersen, 1983 from Nepal. Huang et al. (2006) first recorded one Chinese species D. rhombata Huang, Wang & Hirowatari, 2006 from Guangdong Province. To date, the genus includes eight species distributed in Africa and Asia. In this paper, we review the genus and describe four new species from China. Gozmany and Vari (1973) placed the genus Dinica in the subfamily Nemapogoninae when treating the African species of Tineidae. Petersen (1983) revised Dinica and regarded it as not belonging to the subfamily Nemapogoninae. He thought that the systematic position of the genus could not be ascertained because its male genital structures were too peculiar. Robinson (1980) doubted whether Dinica, Strophalinga Gozmany & Vari and Janseana Gozmany & Vari should be assigned to Nemapogoninae. Later, he (Robinson 1984) put Dinica and Janseana to the Haplotineini Zagulajev in the subfamily Myrmecozelinae when studying the systematic position of the genus Haplotinea Diakonoff & Hinton. Robinson and Tuck (1996) also retained the genus Dinica in the Haplotineini when they revised the checklist of the Tineidae of the Oriental Region. This placement is accepted in the present paper.