Platychasmatinae is a small East Asia

East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...

n subfamily of the moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Notodontidae

Notodontidae

Notodontidae is a family of moths with approximately 3,500 known species. Moths of this family are found in all parts of the world, but they are most concentrated in tropical areas, especially in the New World...

. Only two genera

Genera

Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...

 are placed here at present:

• Cyphanta Walker, 1865
• Platychasma Butler, 1881

Though not all Notodontidae have been assigned to subfamilies yet, it is unlikely that many of these genera incertae sedis

Incertae sedis

, is a term used to define a taxonomic group where its broader relationships are unknown or undefined. Uncertainty at specific taxonomic levels is attributed by , , and similar terms.-Examples:*The fossil plant Paradinandra suecica could not be assigned to any...

will turn out to be Platychasmatinae, as thus family is a rather ancient and distinct group. In fact, a newly-discovered species of Platychasma is somewhat intermediate between the two genera, suggesting that this subfamily might actually be monotypic

Monotypic

In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group with only one biological type. The term's usage differs slightly between botany and zoology. The term monotypic has a separate use in conservation biology, monotypic habitat, regarding species habitat conversion eliminating biodiversity and...

.