Miscellaneous Genera II
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Asta Walker Gen. rev.

Type species: quadrilinea Walker, Borneo.

See
Avitta above. The male antennae are fasciculate, but the bristles are short.

The hindwings can be conspicuously tufted in males. The forewings have four straight, oblique fasciae, two each side of the punctate reniform, and a fainter, zig-zag submarginal.

In the male abdomen, there are hair pencils on each side of the base of the third sternite. The distal margin of the eighth sternite is shallowly notched, and the tergite is slightly tapered, lacking apodemes. In the genitalia, the uncus is robust, strongly hooked, and there is a similarly robust scaphium. The tegumen is about half as long again as the vinculum, which forms a broad saccus. The valves are rather paddle-like and have a small central lobe that bears a tuft of setae. The juxta is not well developed but could have elements of the inverted ‘V’ type. The aedeagus vesica is small but has a group of very small spines distally.

The female (Fig 321;
completa Rothschild, given species status in treatment of quadrilinea below) has a prominent, diamond-shaped sclerite between the ovipositor lobes, better developed than in other genera of the complex. The ostium is set at the anterior of a transverse sclerite that completes the ring of the eighth segment. The seventh sternite is only slightly shorter than the tergite; the posterior corners of the tergite are only slightly produced laterally towards the sternite. The ductus is long, narrow, spherical, with a slightly elongate, umbonate, scobinate signum near its base.

The host plant recorded for the type species (see below) is in the Lauraceae as in the next genus, and the male genitalia features also indicate a closer association with it rather than with
Avitta.

Asta puncta Wileman comb. n. (Japan) has facies similar to quadrilinea, though the fasciation of the forewing is fainter and more broken, and similar features in the male genitalia. It is stated to feed as a larva on Actinodaphne (Lauraceae) by Sugi (1987) and Hayashi (2003). Asta taiwana Wileman comb. n. (Taiwan) has a similar external appearance and is therefore also transferred from Avitta, though the male genitalia (Haruta, 1993: 73) are somewhat divergent from the generic norm.

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