[3] It originally contained only one species, Rhodopaea angelovi, which is paleoendemic to the western Rhodopes of Bulgaria.

[4] In 2019, a second species, Rhodopaea heinzi, was described from northwestern Anatolia in Turkey.

[5] The genus Rhodopaea and the type species, R. angelovi, were originally described by Bulgarian entomologists Blagoy Gruev and Vassil Tomov in 1968.

In 1974, Warchałowski suggested the generic name Gruevia, believing the name Rhodopaea to be preoccupied by a butterfly genus of the same name described by Achille Guenée in 1845.

However, it turned out the genus described by Guenée was actually called Rhodophaea, which was misspelled as Rhodopaea by Bytinski-Salz in 1938.