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Heterolocha Lederer
Type species: laminaria Herrich-Schäffer, Asia Minor.
Synonyms: Nabla Walker (type species phreniata Walker); Symmetresia
Wehrli (type species aristonaria Walker, China).
This genus contains a number of Oriental and southern Palaearctic
species that all have similar facies. The ground colour is various shades of
yellow to fawn, with dull reddish or pinkish irroration and marking: prominent
discal patches, postmedial bands on both wings and an angled or arched
antemedial on the forewing. The interior edges of the postmedials and exterior
edge of the antemedial are often delineated darker.
The male genitalia have no universally diagnostic features. The uncus
apex is slightly expanded from a slender neck. The valves are simple, but
usually with a denser tuft of setae subapically near the costa, directed
dorsally. The furca is either symmetric or with the right arm shorter, the basal
pouch usually rather square. In some species (e.g. H. falconaria Walker
(N. India), H. aristonaria Walker and the Bornean species) the coremata
at the base of the valve are distinctly globular distally.
The female genitalia (polymorphoides sp. n.) have a moderate,
narrow, highly sclerotised and fluted ductus bursa; the bursa is symmetric,
elliptical to spherical, with a strong three-spined signum.
Sugi (1987) illustrated the larvae of two Japanese species. They are
relatively short and broad for geometrids and have a bold reticular or striped
pattern of black, pale yellow and pale grey. Japanese host records are from
Caprifoliaceae such as Abelia, Lonicera and Weigela (Sugi; Miyata,
1983) but Bell (MS) reared an Indian species, phoenicotaeniata Kollar,
from Plumbago (Plumbaginaceae). H. lonicerae Prout from the N.E.
Himalaya, is, as its name suggests, also a feeder on Caprifoliaceae. M.J.
Bascombe (pers. comm.) reared a species from Lonicera in Hong
Kong.
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