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Feliniopsis
Roepke
Type
species; incerta Roepke, Sulawesi.
Synonym
: Eutamsia Fletcher, (type species indistans Guenee, India) syn.
n.
This
genus provides an older name for those Indo-Australian species usually
associated with Eutamsia Fletcher (e.g. Holloway, 1976, 1979), a genus
originally erected to include also a group of African taxa. This synonymy was
pointed out to the author by Mr M.P. Clifton whilst he was studying the African
species. His dissections of specimens from the Indo-Australian tropics indicate
that many more species await description.
Most
species have rather broad, brown forewings with white or pale markings in the
reniform and a dark, quadrate patch at one third, centrally in the medial zone
of the wing. In many species there occur forms with and without the white
reniform patches.
Diagnostic
features of the male genitalia are: connection of the uncus to the tegumen by
both a central column and by lateral ribbon-like sclerotisations; development of
the cucullus into a massive structure of over half the area of the valves
ornamented apically by a zone of heavy spines of variable development; the harpe
is massive, curved; the valve costa is not distinguished markedly from the
sacculus and does not bear a process interacting with the harpe; the aedeagus
vesica has a basal spined strip of sclerotisation and small lobes more distally
that bear fine spines. Trifine hair pencils are present at the base of the
abdomen; the eighth sternite has lateral rods.
In
the female genitalia the bursa lacks signa but usually has some general
scobination; the appendix bursae is weak or absent; the ductus bursae has a
basal ring of sclerotisation (New Caledonian and New Britain taxa).
Bell
(MS) reared a species of Feliniopsis in India. The larva is typical of
the trifine Noctuidae in shape, with segment A8 slightly tumid or humped. The
head is reddish brown. The body is smooth, with primary setae only; they are
minutely ringed white. It is greenish black, tinged grey dorsally (minute white
dots) on either side of an interrupted dorsal white line that is reduced to a
large white spot at the anterior of Al and A2 but is absent from the thoracic
segments. There is another large white spot on A8. There is a similar double
white spiracular to subspiracular line that is edged or centred with orange in
places.
The
larva rests on the underside of the leaf close to the ground, coming out to feed
on tender leaves. Pupation is in a silk-lined chamber in the soil, or on the
surface in a cell incorporating soil particles.
The
host-plants are Adhatoda and other Acanthaceae.
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