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The present paper is devoted to the Palaearctic and Indo-Malayan green limacodids presently considered within the complex Parasa Moore, 1859 and Latoia Guérin-Ménéville, 1844. The diagnostic characteristics of the two genera have yet to be identified and the species composition of both has always been determined intuitively based on predilection of authors. Worldwide, the complex includes about 240 species of very externally diverse moths. The main character which aggregates all these species is the presence of green scales on the thorax and/or forewings. It could be noted that this character can be found in some other genera of Limacodidae (in Taeda Wallengren, 1863 (= Pantoctenia Felder, 1874), Euclea Hübner, 1822, Coenobasis Felder, 1874, and some others) and cannot be regarded as unique. Other morphological characters of the group are quite different and should be analysed in detail. As a result of cladistic analyses of the morphological characters of adults in this paper, monophyly of the complex was not supported and members of the complex were assigned to a number of lineages, eleven of which are proposed as separate genera and described here is as new. The cladistics of larval characters and molecular taxonomic investigations should prove the monophyly of the revealed lineages, but it is in the lap of the future. The first results of molecular analysis have already been obtained (based on examination of sequences of the fragment of mitochondrial gene COI) and they generally conform to the revealed lineages using morphology characters. However, the preliminary molecular investigations are not covered here and they should be continued and involve other, especially nuclear, genes.
The complex under investigation represents a grove of mostly difficult to identify species within Limacodidae. Many included species are important pests of a large number of agricultural plants (palms, coffee, tea, mango, banana, bamboo among them). The numerous misidentifications or unreliable identifications of the species within the complex results in most papers devoted to faunistics and biology published by different authors being of limited value. The present paper contains reviewed taxonomy of the Parasa complex from Palaearctic and Indo-Malaya and sufficient information on diagnostic characters, biology, larval external view (if larvae known), distribution, which should be useful in identification.
