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Timandra Duponchel
Type species: griseata Petersen, Europe.
Synonym: Calothysanis auctorum (Calothysanis Hübner is a synonym
of Scopula Schrank).
All species in this genus have facies much as in the Bornean species,
leading to their being termed 'blood-veins'.
The male genitalia have the uncus and socii rather short, but the valves
are highly complex, divided into two, with a slender digitate process arising
from the base of the cleft between them. The costal arm is more laminate, less
heavily sclerotised, except for the costa running to about the centre of the arm
where it terminates in a separate spur or spatulate process. The saccular arm is
narrower, more digitate, sclerotised, with a strongly setose ventral margin.
The female genitalia have a signum as discussed in the tribal diagnosis.
The lamellae vaginales are complex, usually densely scaled.
Prout (1913, Gross-Schmett.
Erde 4: 47) and Sato (1970) described the early stages. The egg is a
regular oval, covered with oval pitting. The larva is rather rugose, unequally
thickened, the head and T1-2 small, metathorax widening to A1 which is much
swollen and laterally dilated, the remaining segments being slightly swollen
laterally.
The larvae of
Japanese species were illustrated by Sato and by Sugi (1987). They have a
disruptive reticulate patterning of black and shades of grey, tending to be more
blackish on the ventral surface, this black extending up laterally on most of
the central segments to surround a small white spot. The hosts in Japan and
noted by Prout elsewhere are Rumex and Polygonum (Polygonaceae).
Bell (MS) described the very similar larva of T. nelsoni Prout in S.
India and also recorded Polygonum as host-plant.
The pupa (references
above and Nakamura (1994)) is slender, angular, reminiscent of some butterfly
pupae. The frons has a heavy, bilobed protruberance with many minute hooked
setae at the apices of the lobes. The cremaster is elongate, rectangular,
apically bilobed, with the distal pair of hooks set on the lobes. The other
three pairs of hooks are spaced widely along the sides of the rectangle. All
eight pairs are small. The pupa is attached by the frontal protruberance and the
cremaster in an upright position on a silken web.
The genus is
predominantly Palaearctic and subtropical Oriental, but a few taxa occur in
Sundaland, and one in Sulawesi. As well as the species discussed below, there is
T. commixta Warren in Java, though the genitalia of this differ little
from the Himalayan T. convectaria Walker and its Luzon subspecies baguionis
Prout. The species in Sulawesi (slide 18297) is probably close to convectaria
but is genitalically distinct.
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