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Mythimna
(Leucania) irregularis Walker
Nonagria
irregularis Walker,
1857, List Specimens lepid. Insects Colln Br. Mus., 11: 712.
Leucania
coenosa Snellen, 1877, Tijdschr. Ent., 20: 24.
Axylia
abstracta Swinhoe, 1890, Trans. ent. Soc. Lond., 1890: 221.
Leucania
sepulchralis Lucas, 1900, Proc. Roy. Soc. Queensland, 15: 149.
Craterestra
scalata Warren, 1912, Novit. zool, 19: 10, syn. n.,
Diagnosis. The
dark, grey brown forewings with a paler, lenticular costal zone, and a
prominent, pale, discal spot are diagnostic.
Geographical
range. Indo-Australian
tropics to New Guinea and Queensland.
Habitat
preference. Bornean
material is limited and without precise locality data. The species has been
recorded from G. Kinabalu and G. Marapok.
Biology. Sevastopulo
(1948) described the early stages. The almost spherical eggs are laid in small
batches within the fold of a blade of grass. Early instars move as a semi-looper.
They are brown, green when feeding, with eight longitudinal purple lines. Later
instars (there are 6) are green, the colour and pattern formed by minute
dots in a pale ground. The penultimate instar has dark green dorsal and
subdorsal stripes, below the second of which is a white line, a pale olive
stripe, another white line and pale-centred dark green stripe. There is a white
spiracular line separated by a brown stripe from another white line below it.
The final instar is blackish above, with white median and subdorsal lines. The
flanks are striped rufous, green and white. The venter is usually pale greenish
grey.
Pupation is in the
soil in a slight cocoon.
The host-plants are
grasses.
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