[1][4] They are mainly found in the Holarctic in alpine, Arctic and Subarctic regions, and are best known for their unusually long larval development period.

The life-cycle of Gynaephora groenlandica was once believed to take fourteen years, but subsequent studies reduced it to seven, still a very slow development rate that is extremely rare in the Lepidoptera.

It was moved to Gynaephora by Jakob Hübner in 1819[2] and subsequently designated as type species by William Forsell Kirby in 1892.

[7] Laria rossii had been described by Curtis from the Canadian archipelago in 1835,[8] but in 1870 Heinrich Benno Möschler moved it to the genus Dasychira.

[3][12] Embrik Strand in 1910[3] or 1912,[13][14] and Felix Bryk in 1934 followed Staudinger, but in 1950 Igor Vasilii Kozhanchikov moved D. pumila to Gynaephora, and also named a new species G. sincera.

[3] Chou Io and Ying Chiang-Chu described four new species from China in 1979: G. aureata, G. minora, G. qinghaiensis and G. ruoergensis, with their paper written in Chinese.

She moved G. alpherakii, G. selenophora and G. sincera to the genus Lachana, but refrained from making a decision regarding the newer Chinese taxa.

[14] In 2008 Trofimova published her opinion that G. aureata, G. minora, G. qinghaiensis and G. ruoergensis, all described from China by Chou and Ying in 1979, are possibly synonyms of Lachana alpherakii, although not having been able to study the type specimens, she was unable to confirm her suspicions.