The first character is somewhat problematic since the anepi-sternum is reduced to some extent in Hesperiidae (Fig. 4BeC) as well; in fact there is even a continous reduction within that family as evident by the larger anepisternum found in Euschemon (Fig. 4B) compared to Hesperiinae (Fig. 4C). However, the anepisternum in Hesperiidae is never reduced to the extreme degree found in Pap-ilionoidea (Fig. 4D). Ackery et al. (1999) listed three additional characters supporting a monophyletic Papilionoidea: secondary sclerite present behind metascutellum; parepisternal suture running in a straight or smoothly curved line; and mesophragma with dorsal processes. The first character could not be verified with
confidence by Heikkilä et al. (2012) and was thus omitted from that study, whereas the last two were interpreted or scored different to Ackery et al. (1999). Heikkilä et al. (2012) found the parepisternal suture in Hedylidae to differ from that in Hesperiidae and Lycae-nidae, but to be similar to the condition found in some Nympha-lidae and Papilionidae. The processes of the mesophragma were discussed by Heikkilä et al. (2012), but polarised differently because of the signal in the molecular dataset. The mesophragmal processes (Fig. 6B) were indeed found in all classic Papilionoidea families, but
is better interpreted as a plesiomorphic condition which is modi-fied to the flat ridges found in Hesperiidae and Hedylidae. The mesophragmal ridges can thus been seen as a good example of how strong molecular results can lead to re-evaluation of the evolution of morphological characters.