Family Tridentaformidae

Tridentaformidae Davis, 2015

Erected as a full family by Regier et al. (2015) (1), Tridentaforma was previously placed in Incurvariidae (Davis, 1978b (2)) and Prodoxidae (Nielsen & Davis, 1985 (3)).

One species in one genus in our area (2) (3) (4).

Western North America (1)

"The family relationships of Tridentaforma have long been recognized as problematic (Davis, 1998) ... Morphologically, the genus shares important features with the Adelidae (basally scaled haustellum), Incurvariidae (male valva with rows of broad spines), and the prodoxid genus Lampronia (metafurcal apophyses free, lateral cervical sclerites without lateral process). Earlier molecular studies, using mitochondrial DNA (Brown et al., 1994), 18S rDNA (Wiegmann, 1994) and dopa decarboxylase (Friedlander et al., 2000), agreed in excluding Tridentaforma from Prodoxidae, but disagreed on where it should go instead. ... the present molecular data firmly exclude Tridentaforma from all other families. The molecular analysis also helps to explain the patchwork of characters shared variously between Tridentaforma and Prodoxidae, Incurvariidae and Adelidae, by showing that it is closely related to all three: it is the sister group to Incurvariidae+Adelidae+Heliozelidae, and these plus Tridentaforma are sister group to Prodoxidae" (1).