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Gonanticlea Swinhoe
Type species: aversa Swinhoe, India.
Holloway (1979: 306, 315) reviewed the limits of this genus, removing a
major group of Australasian species into Papuanticlea Holloway. True Gonanticlea
exhibit strong sexual dimorphism of forewing pattern, that of the male
always being bolder, more contrasted, than that of the female. The hindwings are
often, but not always, dull orange-yellow above, but speckled and finely
fasciated ochre and brown below. The male characteristically (though not in the
type species) has a creamy-white, more or less straight medial band on the
forewing, separating a dark brown area that extends to the irregularly angular
postmedial, from a less uniform antemedial area of dark brown. In the female the
medial band is pale reddish brown, sharply defined basad as before, but
continuing extensively with the same pale colour distally to the postmedial. The
male antennae are filiform.
The male abdomen offers no clearly diagnostic features, with the
genitalia showing great variety of form. The valves are usually simple, but the
juxta sometimes bears slender processes. There are no coremata on the valves but
the seventh segment of the abdomen is very much shorter than those on either
side, and can bear coremata (as in G. amplior Thierry-Mieg). The tegumen
has a conspicuous, anteriorly directed spur as in the previous genus, Papuanticlea
Holloway and Crasilogia Warren (Holloway, 1984b), so this may
indicate a sister-relationship with this mainly tropical Australasian generic
complex. The complex was not placed to tribe by Nielsen, Edwards & Rangsi
(1996).
The female genitalia are delicately built, the ductus slender, the
corpus bursae pyriform, containing a somewhat ovate signum consisting of short,
conical spines that grade away in size basad.
Gonanticlea is primarily Oriental, with the two Australasian species being larger,
more robust, one ranging from the Moluccas to the Solomons and the other endemic
to New Caledonia. There are several species endemic to Sulawesi.
No information on the biology has been located.
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