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Beara
Walker
Type
species: dichromella
Walker, [India].
The forewings are more a pinkish or violet grey-brown compared with
Gelastocera. The costa is slightly sinuous and the apex slightly falcate,
with the central part of the distal margin straight.
In
the male genitalia the saccus is long. The valve can have an acute process on
the costal margin, but has the apex of the valve ususually coiled in the type
species. The aedeagus vesica can contain numerous spines or a single cornutus.
The female (type species) has a short, narrow ductus, and a relatively small
narrow bursa with a thickly crinkled basal half.
The biology of the type species was described by Bell (MS). The larva is
described as lymantriid-like in shape or aspect, as the setal tubercles are
enlarged, the subspiracular ones of T2 and T3 particularly so, making the body
wider there. Mostly there are only primary setae but these are as long as the
larva is broad, pure white, minutely pinnate and each arising from a white
conical tubercle. The dorsolateral tubercles of A2 are large, wart like,
chocolate in colour, with a covering of short black hairlets and a white primary
seta on a tubercle apically; similar tubercles occur subdorsally on A8. The body
is black, with the anal segment brown-orange. The thoracic segments are barred
with grey transversely on the dorsum, with often a quadrate orange mark at the
centre of the dorsum of A1. There is a dorsal band of yellowish white extending
from this quadrate mark to posteriorly on A7. Variants have this band yellow,
orange-tinged, and lateral lines and markings of yellow may also be present. The
venter is livid greenish centrally.
The pupa is a semiovoid, rounded at each end, with no cremaster. The cocoon is
made of very thickly woven light brown, black-speckled silk, a broadly truncated
ovoid fixed with a pedicel to the underside of a leaf. Dorsally is is produced
into a peak above the anterior emergence slit. On the dorsum there is also a
slight central prtruberance and a pair of small subdorsal peaks just before the
posterior end. The venter is slightly convex with a short, thickish stalk in the
middle holding the cocoon clear of the substrate.
Host plants recorded were Grewia (Tiliaceae), Trema (Ulmaceae) and
Ziziphus (Rhamnaceae). It has also been recorded (Moore, 1883;
Sevastopulo, 1941; Mathur, 1942; Robinson et al., 2001) from Hibiscus
(Malvaceae), Celtis (Ulmaceae) and Xylia (Leguminosae).
The genus extends from the Indian Subregion to New Guinea and Queensland,
and was reviewed by Holloway (1982), with additional comments in Kobes (1997),
but see below.
Beara
papuana
Hampson is transferred to
Gyrtothripa. Beara
achromatica
Hampson (Philippines) is also misplaced, the genitalia of the unique female
resembling those of
Characoma
and relatives in the Sarrothripini.
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