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Spodoptera
pecten Guenee
Spodoptera pecten Guenee, 1852, Spec. Gen. Lep. Hist nat. Insectes, 5:155.
Spodoptera pecten Guenee; Holloway, 1976: 12.
Spodoptera
pecten 
Spodoptera
pecten  |
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Diagnosis. The
male resembles a rather short-winged, brown S. mauritia; the antennae are
diagnostically bipectinate. The hindwings of both sexes lack the dark delineation
of the veins seen in mauritia. The membranous zone of the female
genitalia is highly developed.
Geographical
range. Indo-Australian tropics to New Guinea.
Habitat
preference. The species is abundant in open, cultivated or disturbed
habitats in the lowlands.
Biology. The
life history was described by Sevastopulo (1941b). The egg is pale bluish green,
spherical, with numerous ribs from micropyle to base. Eggs are laid in batches,
often of two or three layers, covered with scales from the female abdomen.
The fully grown
larva is very similar to that of S. mauritia but smaller. It is brownish
or greenish grey with paler dorsal and subdorsal stripes, the latter edged above
with black lunules. There is a pale spiracular stripe edged above by purple.
Pupation is in the
soil in a slight earthen cocoon.
The host-plants are
mostly grasses but there is a record in the Forest Research Institute of
Malaysia of the larva feeding on the seeds of Shorea curtisii (Dipterocarpaceae).
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