lacewing

plural lacewings

1. Any of a number of gauzy-winged insects of certain families within the order Neuroptera.

   We recently proposed a new genus of Thorny Lacewing (Insecta, Neuroptera, Rhachiberothidae) from the Eocene amber of France.

   2005, Bulletin de la Société entomologique de France, volume 110, page 128

   2 more examples

   The family Rachiberothidae has been of considerable controversy and has been considered at different times during its history as a subfamily of Berothidae (Tjeder, 1959), or even of Mantispidae (Willmann, 1990b, 1004b). The "thorny lacewings" generally resemble other berothids except in the raptorial forelegs, which are convergent with those of the mantispids. While thorny lacewings are today confined to sub-Saharan Africa (U. Aspock and Mansell, 1994; U. Aspöck and H. Aspöck, 1997), they were clearly distributed throughout the world in the Cretaceous and perhaps into the Tertiary as well, disappearing from other regions apparently during the Eocene-Oligocene transition.

   2005, David Grimaldi, Evolution of the Insects, page 356

   As an extinct clade, many species of the saucrosmylids were erected just based on a single fore- or hindwing, and it should be realized that providing more stable characters is necessary when describing new lacewing taxa just based on an isolated hindwing.

   2015 October 21, “Familial Clarification of Saucrosmylidae stat. nov. and New Saucrosmylids from Daohugou, China (Insecta, Neuroptera)”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI

   Synonyms: lacewing fly

2. Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Cethosia (order Lepidoptera).