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SUBFAMILY
PANTHEINAE |
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Baorisa Moore Type species: hieroglyphica Moore, India. The dramatically colourful forewing markings on a satiny white ground are highly distinctive in this genus. It has been reviewed by Behounek, Speidel & Thöny (1996). Kobes (1992) noted characters that it held in common with Trichosea Grote such as the general appearance of the male genitalia, and associated it with this genus in Trichoseini of the Pantheinae, considering that the weakly hairy eyes, open tympanum and ringed legs, together with quadrifine venation, placed it in that subfamily. The clypeofrons appears to be extensively covered with white scales directed in towards the base of the tongue. The male antennae are filiform and lack cilia. The labial palps are very short with a short third segment. The legs and underside of the body and wings are extensively marked with bluish black, the markings of the wings repeating some of the darker marks on the upperside, and the legs are ringed as indicated by Kobes (1992). In the male abdomen, phragma lobes between the first and second tergites are lacking; these are present in most Catocalinae. The eighth tergite lacks apodemes. The sternite has a central corema in a deep pocket at its anterior end, another feature in common with Trichosea. The male genitalia do, as Kobes (1992) and Behounek et al. (1996) indicated, show a number of ‘trifine’ features such as a peniculus on each side of the tegumen, a corona of setae round the apex of the valve, and a simple saccular harpe. The juxta is broad, not of the inverted ‘V’ type seen in many catocalines; if anything, it is the reverse. The aedeagus vesica is simple, elongate, with a crown of massive spines on a lobe where the vesica is angled subbasally. In the female, the ostium is between the seventh and eighth segments, slightly crinkled and scobinate. The ductus is usually slightly expanded over its basal part, and sclerotised. The corpus bursae is an irregular pyriform, and is usually sclerotised, with scobination and corrugated. The ductus seminalis arises distally from the bursa, another feature atypical of the catocalines. The genus is probably best placed in a group of miscellaneous trifine genera under this loose umbrella of the Pantheinae until the classification of the basal branches of the ‘trifine’ noctuid clade can be elucidated. In addition to the type species, Behounek et al. (1996) have described further species from the Philippines (B. philippina), Sulawesi (B. sulawesiana) and Flores (B. floresiana), the last almost pure white. |
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