SEE PROFILE

The adelids, or fairy moths, are easily distinguished from other lepidopterans by their very long antennae and very large eyes. In the Neotropical Region there are presently 15 described species distributed among the genera Ceromitia Zeller and Adela Latreille (Pastrana 1960; Nielsen 1985). Trichorrabda Meyrick was synonymized by Davis (1984).The larvae usu-ally are miners of leaves or flowers in the early instars. Subse-quently, probably from the second instar onwards, they live in a case constructed from plant material, and feed on leaf litter, or may live among the low growing vegetation. Pupation oc-curs in the larval cases (Scoble 1995). The genus Ceromitia, which is restricted entirely to the Afrotropical, Australian and Neotropical regions (Nielsen 1980), was subdivided by Janse (1945), after studying 58 South African species and according to male genital struc-tures, into three distinct groups. One of these, the genus Ceromitia with C. walbergi Zeller as type species, is charac-terized as having a minimum of one pair of pectinifers (comb teeth) on the valvae (Pastrana 1960). The species being de-scribed in this paper is assigned to this genus. MATERIAL AND METHODS Specimens of C. tubulifolia sp. nov. were collected by the authors and are deposited in the Museo de Zoología