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Oraesia
emarginata Fabricius
Noctua
emarginata Fabricius, 1794, Ent. Syst. III,
2: 82.
Oraesia
metallescens Guenée, 1852, Hist. Nat. Insectes, Spec. gén. Lépid.
6:
364.
Oraesia
alliciens Walker,
[1858] 1857, List
Specimens lepid. Insects Colln Br. Mus., 12: 945.
Oraesia
tentans Walker,
[1858] 1857, List
Specimens lepid. Insects Colln Br. Mus., 12: 954.
Oraesia
camaguina Swinhoe, 1918, Ann. Mag. nat. Hist. (9),
2: 90, syn.
n.
Calpe
emarginata Fabricius;
Holloway, 1976: 38.
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Diagnosis.
The species has forewing shape and markings similar to those in Plusiodonta
Guenée,
but is much more robust, and the male has antennae bipectinate to two-thirds.
The male has rather uniform rich brown wings with a reddish golden triangle to a
triangular area extending from the tornus up the outer edge of the postemedial.
Females are more variegated, less reddish, and usually have a much more
conspicuous pale streak along CuA over the second quarter of the wing that has a
distinctly darker brown area between it and the dorsum. There also may be a
continuation of this pale streak along CuA2 in the third quarter (O.
argyrosigna Moore,
mentioned as a possible Bornean species in the generic account, is distinguished
particularly by a shorter, broader silvery-white streak in this position, with
another one subapically).
Taxonomic
note. Poole (1989) retained camaguina
Swinhoe
as a good species, but its male genitalia are indistinguishable from those of
Indian emarginata.
Bornean
material is also compatible. However, the record of emarginata
from
Australia (Nielsen et al., 1996) needs further examination. Larval material from
Queensland reared by F.P. Dodd and some preliminary dissections by M.R. Honey in
BMNH of adults developing from these suggest that two distinct species may be
involved. The larval material is preserved dry but is of two distinct types,
both in turn different from the larva of Oriental emarginata as
described below. One larva type is black with extensive pale yellow speckling
and a more even-sized row of larger yellow spots subdorsally. The other is much
paler, brownish with slight longitudinal delineation and a subdorsal row of pale
patches, those on A1 and A2 larger. The dark larva has adults with male
genitalia similar to emarginata, and such genitalia have also been detected in
material from New Guinea and Tanimbar. The pale larva has adults where the valve
has a small digitate process from the interior of the sacculus, and where the
aedeagus is slender,
without a cornutus in the vesica. The latter has not been detected outside
Australia. Both these species are generally smaller than emarginata and
have paler hindwings in the male; they appear to differ subtly in the distal
markings of the forewing, though this is generally as in emarginata.
There is also a new species in Sulawesi (slide 19292) with a more sinuously
oblique forewing postmedial and a darker hindwing than emarginata.
The male genitalia are distinctive: the valves have an interiorly directed spine
at the centre of the ventral margin; there are small spined lobes flanking the
anellus; the aedeagus vesica has four clumps of slender spines.
Geographical
range. E. Africa, Indian Subregion to Taiwan, China and Japan, also in
Philippines, Sulawesi and Borneo.
Habitat
preference. The only Bornean specimens seen in recent surveys are four from
G. Kinabalu: from Bundu Tuhan, an area of cultivation and forest remnants on the
western slopes; montane forest at 1620m and 1930m. There are also several from
Tenom in the lowlands of Sabah.
Biology.
The larva has been described and sometimes illustrated by Moore (1884-1887),
Gardner (1941, 1947, 1948b (pupa)), Mutuura et al. (1965),
Sugi (1987) and Bell (MS). It has the prolegs on A3 absent and those on A4
reduced. The head and body are velvety black. The spiracles posterior to A1 are
red. There is a dorsolateral row of white-edged yellow patches along each side,
two to each segment, the posterior one of the pair smaller. From A2 to A5 the
larger spots of each segment are relatively larger, and the intervening smaller
ones become red. Some of the primary setae are also based on white spots, and
these are enlarged and more frequent on the thoracic segments.
Pupation
is within a light cocoon of silk amongst the leaves of the host plant. The pupa
does not have a powdery bloom.
The host
plants recorded by these authors and Robinson et
al. (2001)
were Cissampelos
and
Cocculus
(Menispermaceae).
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