SUBFAMILY HYPENINAE
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Catada Walker

Type species: glomeralis Walker (= vagalis Walker), Sri Lanka.

Lödl (1999c) redefined and reviewed this genus, excluding Catadella Strand from the synonymy.

The labial palps are long (5x head), slender, upcurved. The male antennae are laminate in the vertical plane, and the eyes in that sex are enlarged. The forewings are relatively uniform in colour but are bisected by a fine white fascia which may show modification in the discal area. There may also be faintly darker markings elsewhere, such as an orbicular stigma, an irregular antemedial and a punctate submarginal. The hindwings are uniform above and usually shades of grey-brown or fawn. The underside of the hindwings is usually paler than that of the forewings and more strongly marked with a darker, crenulate postmedial and punctate submarginal, the former very finely delineated.

In the male abdomen, the sternite of A3 has apodeme-like processes on its anterior margin. Something similar occurs Anoratha Moore (see below). The eighth segment is short, the tergite with distinct apodemes, the sternite with a weak framed corematous structure. The male genitalia provide striking diagnostic features. The uncus forms a sort of inverted scoop with tooth-like structures along its margin on each side. The scaphium is robust, forming a structure like a gnathus. The tegumen is much larger than the vinculum, slender, and joining the latter where the valve costa articulates. The valves are flimsy, strap-like, often bilobed apically. They support massive coremata on their exterior surface over the basal half. There is no saccus. The aedeagus is small.

The female genitalia of the type species have some similarities with those of Anoratha, Lödl (1999c), such as the heavily sclerotised ductus bursae. The corpus bursae is narrowly ovate, with a scobinate signum centrally. However, other species have a larger, narrower, unsclerotised ductus bursae that expands gently into a pyriform corpus bursae that usually lacks a signum. The ductus seminalis in these other species arises subbasally from the narrow ductus section.

The larva of the type species is described below.

The genus is most diverse in the Oriental tropics, but Lödl (1999c) also considered that charalis Swinhoe (Australia), obscura Joannis (Mauritius), four African species and two from Madagascar were probably also true Catada. Lödl (1999a) suggested that the genus Nolasena Walker might be related to Catada; see also Holloway (2005: 29, 451) for a treatment of the genus and further comment.

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