SUBFAMILY HADENINAE
View Image Gallery of Subfamily Hadeninae

Dyrzela Walker

Type species: plagiata Walker.

Synonym: Maxilua Walker (type species frontalis Walker = incrassata Walker).

This genus has its greatest diversity in the Oriental tropics. It consists of small species with brown or leaden grey forewings that are traversed by three (antemedial, medial, postmedial) fine dark fasciae; a definitive feature is a dark brown patch based on the costa distal to the postmedial. The male antennae are ciliate (castanea, incrassata), weakly bipectinate towards the base (plagiata) or partially (basal two thirds) strongly bipectinate (bosca  / increnulata group).

The male abdomen has no basal hair pencils. The eighth segment is variably modified, with lateral coremata between it and the seventh segment (tumidimacula only), the tergite usually reduced to a slender rod-like sclerotisation with a distal expansion or ring (in plagiata it resembles the ring-pull of a drink can!), and the sternite with narrow lateral longitudinal sclerotisation (not external rods) that may be connected at each end to a broader central band (incrassata) or bridged interiorly by a transverse band (plagiata).

In the male genitalia the valve is simple, straplike, with a basal corema that may be somewhat rigid, sclerotised, triangular (bosca group). The sacculus is unadorned but there is a tridentate or bidentate, ventrally directed process from the costa at the base of which is a sinuous spur or clavus. The saccus is unusually long and slender.

In the female genitalia the ovipositor lobes are relatively large, squarish, the eighth segment a deep, simple ring (narrower dorsally), and the bursa weak, unadorned, on a short, sclerotised ductus.

The larva has the first two pairs of prolegs reduced, walking as a semi- looper (Bell, MS). It is stoutest centrally, almost twice the width of the head. There are indications of specialisation on Grewia (Tiliaceae).

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