Nolidae

Hampson, 1894

The Nolidae are a family of moths with about 1,700 species described throughout the world. They are mostly small in size with dull coloring. Distinctive feature of two subfamilies, Nolinae and Collomeninae it is the presence of tufts of scales raised on the front wings, clearly visible for example in the Nola subchlamydula . *
The larvae also tend to have muted colors and tufts of short hair. Previously, this group was included in the Noctuidae family.

The Nolidae moth family, one of the four main groups of quadrifid noctuids identified in Zahiri et al. (2011), it embraces a heterogeneous group of taxa which have historically been assigned different taxonomic grades.
The Nolidae and three other main families (Euteliidae, Erebidae and Noctuidae) form a monophyletic assembly (groups of species derived from the same ancestral line), informally referred to as the quadrifid noctuoids.
However, even though these four families form a monophyletic assembly with strong support, the relationships between them are still unclear. The quadrifid noctuoids, together with the triffid lineages (i.e. Oenosandridae and Notodontidae), constitute the superfamily Noctuoidea , which contains the largest number of Lepidoptera.


* Zahiri, R .; Lafontaine, J. D .; Holloway, J. D .; Kitching, I. J .; Schmidt, B. C .; Kaila, L. & Wahlberg, N. (2013). "Major lineages of Nolidae (Lepidoptera, Noctuoidea) elucidated by molecular phylogenetics"