Abstract: 【Aim】The morphological characteristics of the forewing of the representative species in two controversial genera, Pochazia and Ricania, were studied, to provide more evidence for the feature revision and species attribution of the both related genera. 【Methods】In total, 169 specimens of 10 species belonging to Pochazia and Ricania were examined, nine homologous landmarks and the outline of forewing (constituted by sixty semi-landmarks) were selected for each specimen. Principal component analysis (PCA) and canonical variate analysis (CVA) were performed to quantitatively analyze the veins and outline of forewing and to explore the variation rule of the morphology of forewing of these two genera. 【Results】 The forewing analysis showed that the first 3 principal components and canonical variates could explain 74.945% and 88.096% of the variation of the veins and outline of the forewing of 10 representative species of Pochazia and Ricania, respectively, indicating that the bifurcation point of vein CuA, claval margin, costal margin and apical half of posterior margin all have high variations. The high dispersion of the PC1 in PCA results of these two genera validated that the bifurcation point of the vein CuA, claval margin, costal margin and apical half of posterior margin can be used as a basis for intergeneric classification. The interspecific CVA showed fine aggregation and high dispersion, and the significance analysis based on Mahalanobis distance revealed remarkable differences in these 10 representative species.【Conclusion】The geometric morphometric analysis can be used for the classification of Pochazia and Ricania, but the diagnostic characteristics between these two genera require further studies.

Key words: Ricaniidae, geometric morphology, principal component analysis, canonical variate analysis, Mahalanobis distance