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SUBFAMILY
PANTHEINAE |
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Arcte Kollar Type species: polygrapha Kollar, India. Synonym: Cocytodes Guenée (type species coerula Guenée, East Indies). This genus has numerous unique features, but is one of those that includes species with both spined (coerula) and unspined (the rest) midtibiae, leading them to have been split in the past between the Catocalinae and Ophiderinae (Holloway, 2005, and references therein). The species are all large, robust. Males have a massive corema in the eighth abdominal segment; the abdomen is also distinguished by a scaleless, laminate plate dorsally that extends over several of the more distal segments; it may be sound-producing. The two lobes in the diaphragma between first and second tergites are shallow, triangular. The facies is uniform through the genus as illustrated and as described below, the rather ligneous forewing pattern contrasting with the iridescent blue banding of the hindwing. The male antennae are filiform, smooth, and the hindwing dorsum of that sex has extensive hair‑scales. The labial palps, though upturned, have a very small third segment. The clypeofrons is scaled, the scales converging on the axis and directed obliquely upwards at 45°; the axis is unscaled but covered by this convergence. Features of the male abdomen have been mentioned above. The genitalia have a robust uncus with an apical hook. The tegumen is rather swollen on each side. The valves are simple, tongue like, upcurved, sometimes with small processes on the interior margin of the sacculus. The juxta is a simple plate. The aedeagus is short, straight, the vesica extending from it for half the length with a few small patches of spines of different sizes and density, and also usually a spine or other sclerotised process subbasally. The female of the type species has the ostium just posterior to the almost complete ring of the eighth segment, with an extensive intersegmental membrane between it and the seventh segment. The ductus is moderate, slender, unsclerotised but fluted. The corpus bursae is an elongate pyriform, lightly corrugate and rugose to scobinate throughout. The ductus seminalis arises from close to the base of this. The genus contains four species and extends through the Indo‑Australian tropics to Australia and Samoa. The larvae are striking and appear to feed exclusively on Urticaceae as discussed below. The African genus Pseudoarcte Viette has similar male antennae, forewing facies and scaling of the clypeofrons, and may therefore be related, as may the Neotropical Pararcte Hampson for the same reasons. |
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