The genus Luteostriata is characterized by the presence of a cephalic retractor muscle, which allows those animals to pull their anterior end upwards and backwards.

Later, in 1861, Karl Moriz Diesing noticed that the description of Schultze and Müller's species did not match with that of Darwin's and renamed it Geoplana mülleri.

[7] In the following decades, several authors, such as Albert Riester and Ernst Marcus, continued to identify most Brazilian yellow planarians with 5 or 7 dark longitudinal stripes as Geoplana marginata.

In 1990, Robert E. Ogren and Masaharu Kawakatsu transferred G. marginata (based on the descriptions by Graff and Marcus) to the genus Notogynaphallia along with G. caissara, G. abundans, G. fita and several other species.

[1][2] However, a molecular study on the phylogeny of the subfamily Geoplaninae suggested that Luteostriata is possibly paraphyletic, forming a monophyletic clade with the genera Issoca and Supramontana.

[15] The clade is supported by at least one synapomorphy, the presence of a cephalic retractor muscle derived from the longitudinal cutaneous ventral musculature that anteriorly dissipates by detaching its fibers, making them open in a fan-like fashion towards the body margins.