[1] Ron Hodges decided to separate a number of new species he was describing in 1966 from Batrachedra in his new genus Chedra, on the basis of the adult males possessing a "single, strong, apical spine on the ampulla" (also known as the harpe).

[1][2] In his 1978 treatment of the microlepidoptera of Hawaii, Elwood Zimmerman classified this group as a new subfamily of the family Gelechiidae, which he coined the Momphinae.

[1] That same year, however, Hodges classified Batrachedra, Chedra, Duospina and Ifeda in the family Batrachedridae in The moths of America north of Mexico.

[3][4] Hodges changed the classification in his 1983 Check List of the Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico and included the group as the subfamily Batrachedrinae of the family Coleophoridae.

Upon closer examination of the genitals of it and other species Sugisima transferred the genus, according to the key in Hodges' 1999 reclassification of the group, in the subfamily Batrachedrinae of the family Batrachedridae.

Kaila used an undescribed species from Australia which mined in the plant Lomandra longifolia, provisionally called "Batrachedra eustola", in his analysis.

At the time, the few old specimens which existed in London had never been properly examined, and no one had knowingly collected any species of this genus since, and as such most of the traits used by Kaila were unknown.

Inclusion of the genus Epimarptis in his analysis showed it belonged within his Coleophoridae sensu lato, but that including it caused a collapse of resolution in the basal clades of this provisional family.

[10][11][12] Later in 2004, Sugisima stated that, after examining the specimens of the new Japanese species of Epimarptis he had just recognised, and new photographs of the specimens in London, and filling out some of the numerous until then unknown morphological characteristics of this obscure genus, it was not possible for him to agree with Kaila's analysis wholeheartedly, because in some characteristics Epimarptis fell outside even Coleophoridae sensu lato.

[10] In Zhi-Qiang Zhang's 2011 attempt to number all the known animal species of earth, van Nieukerken et al., the authors of the section on Lepidoptera, were aware of Hodges' 1999 work but chose to repudiate it, and re-recognised Epimarptidae as a family again.