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Sasunaga
Moore
Type
species: tenebrosa Moore.
The
forewings are long, narrow, apically produced, brown with a striate ligneous
pattern in which the orbicular stigma is often prominent. The hindwings are
large, often triangular, particularly in male specimens.
In
the male abdomen the trifine hair pencils are well developed in S. leucorina
Hampson
and S. interrupta, but not in tenebrosa and allies. The eighth
sternite has large but short coremata associated with lateral rods. The valve of
the genitalia has a corona, and there several long setae on its ventral margin.
The harpe is very basal, distinctively bifid .The uncus apex is swollen, setose,
with a distal, dorsal spine above a rounded ventral portion. The aedeagus vesica
is narrow, small, tubular, unadorned.
The
female genitalia have the ovipositor lobes rectangular, set obliquely to the
slender apodemes, so they have their distal margin ventrad. The base of the
ductus is a sclerotised tube, from which the rather pyriform bursa gradually
expands; just distal to the sclerotised ductus is a small, globular appendix
bursae. The bursa is finely scobinate and corrugate.
The
larva of the type species is described below.
The
American genus Magusa Walker and the African Callixena Saalmueller
are similar in facies, but differ sufficiently in male and female genitalia
characters for all three genera to be treated as distinct. The orientation of
the small ovipositor lobes and the type of coremata described above on the male
eighth sternite are shared, indicating that the three form a natural
group. Host-plant records for Magusa (Kimball, 1965) and Sasunaga (see
below) are all from the family Rhamnaceae.
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