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Micropacha Roepke
Type species: kalisi
Roepke.
This genus includes a small number of S.E. Asian members of the
Gastropachinae. The wings are rather rounded and deep compared to other
Oriental taxa, having smooth margins as in Gastropacha pardale,
the Papuan
genera Isostigena Bethune-Baker and Sporostigena Bethune-Baker, and the
Sundanian Paradoxopla. The hindwing venation is gastropachine though the
humeral veins are weak.
In the male genitalia the eighth sternite is modified in various ways on
the more sclerotised posterior margin. The tegumen ring is entire, narrow,
with a pair of small lobes. The valves are very slender, produced into
long, pincer-like processes in kalisi and an undescribed Burmese (East
Pegu) and Peninsular Malaysian species, but divided, asymmetric and much
smaller in the Bornean species. In the first two species there is a small
cubile but this is vestigial in the Bornean species.
The two Papuan genera also have the eighth sternite modified but differ in
features of the genitalia themselves. Sporostigena has a cubile consisting
of a pair of squarish plates, a weak tegumen, simple, triangular valves
and a large aedeagus with a serrate ventral spur and voluminous vesica.
Isostigena has the eighth sternite anteriorly deeply bilobed, posteriorly
bidentate in a notch; the tegumen is similar in structure to that of
Gastropacha; the valves are simple, a slender rod arising from a broader
basal part; there is a pronounced saccus.
Two mainland Asian species complete the genus Micropacha, M. lidderdalii
Druce comb. n. (N.E. Himalaya) and an undescribed S.
Chinese species (slides 1121, 1122).
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