In adult alienopterids, the first set of wings are reduced into shortened sclerotised scale-like structures.

It was reassigned to the dictyopteran superfamily Umenocoleoidea as sister family to the beetle-like Umenocoleidae by Vršanský et al. (2018),[2] and a more recent analysis similarly places Alienopteridae and Umenocoleidae as sister taxa within Dictyoptera, but placing both lineages outside of Blattodea.

[9] A 2021 study alternatively suggested that some alienopterid nymphs functioned as ant mimics, based on morphological features that closely resembled contemporary sphecomyrmine ants, and suggested that the adult genus Teyia was also a wasp mimic, though mimicry in other adult alienopterids was rejected.

[1] An undescribed species is also known from the Turonian aged Orapa kimberlite pipe sediments in Botswana.

[2] Luo, Xu & Jarzembowski (2020) transferred Alienopterix and Vzrkadlenies, originally described as alienopterids, to the family Cratovitismidae.