Choi (in press) has reviewed this tribe cladistically and suggested it bears a sister-relationship to Xanthorhoini. The definitive characters his analysis identified are: a bulging forewing postmedial; the eighth abdominal segment in the male is longer than the seventh; the male eighth sternite has an oblong sclerite; the calcar is absent (a secondary loss from the Xanthorhoini condition); the eighth tergite of the female is unsclerotised; larval seta SV3 on A3 is outside a line between L1 and SV1; the larval paraprocts are moderate, rounded. The male genitalia have simple valves characterised by a setose lobe at the base of the valve costa. The lobes have an almost filamentous ventral extension towards the juxta suggestive of homology with the eupitheciine labides. However, Pierce (1914) interpreted these as lobes of the anellus, an interpretation supported by Choi (in press, pers. comm.). The signum of the female genitalia, when present, is a scobinate or spined patch or band much as in the Xanthorhoini. Patocka (1995) reviewed pupal characters in the tribe and noted that those of Lampropteryx Stephens differed from those of other genera in features of the cremaster. Three genera occur in Borneo, but the greatest diversity of the tribe is Holarctic. >>Forward <<Return to Contents page

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