Four new species of Aenetus Herrich-Schäffer (Lepidoptera: Hepialidae) from eastern Indonesia, with comment on distributional correlation with Gondwana tectonics

Four new Aenetus species and geographic records are presented for islands of eastern Indonesia: A. porlovi sp. nov. from Lomblen (= Palu Lembata) Island in the Solor Archipelago, A. degroofi sp. nov. from Pulau Yamdena in the Tanimbar Archipelago, A. negasii sp. nov. from Palau Sumba, and A. verdiceae sp. nov. from Palau Selayar on the southern coast of Sulawesi. New geographic records are made for undetermined specimens from the the islands of Flores, Timor, and Buru.

These records further extend the known distributional limit of Aenetus in South East Asia in a region comprising Gondwana terranes. The Selayar and Sumba islands localities are geologically part of, or derived from, ‘continental’ Laurasia, but may originally comprise fragments of Gondwana that accreted in Cretaceous time. A tectonic correlation would indicate the possibility that the distribution of Aenetus in Southeast Asia was mediated either as fragments of Gondwana accreting to Asia in the Cretaceous, or more recently by the Sula Spur of northeastern Gondwana merging with Southeast Asia about 25 Ma.

The presence of A. sumatraensis Grehan, Witt & Ignatev in northern Sumatra may have resulted from tectonic accretion such as the Woyla island arc, or represents later range expansion following convergence of the Sula Spur. Future biotic surveys for Aenetus in this region, along with determination of its allopatric sister group, will be essential for resolving the biogeographic boundaries of this genus, particularly with respect to Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi.