SUBFAMILY EUTELIINAE
View Image Gallery of Subfamily Euteliinae

Targalla Walker Gen. rev.

Type species: infida Walker.

Synonyms: Cryassa Walker; Euteliella Roepke syn. n.

This genus has been revived from synonymy with Phlegetonia Guenee, regarded here as a junior subjective synonym of Eutelia Hübner .

Targalla species are all distinguished by a marked flexing of the tegumen in the male genitalia (seen in lateral view well in Fig. 113 for T. apicifascia Hampson). The uncus is short, terminally hooked except in the Euteliella group where the hook is absent. The saccus is long, usually relatively broad. The eighth abdominal sternite of the male bears a pair of coremata, (Figs. 26, 27), massive in T. suffundens Walker.


All species except T. apicifascia Hampson and its Fijian and Samoan sister species T. barbara Robinson comb. n. have smooth, filiform antennae in both sexes; the pectinations are present but reduced in the apicifascia pair. No other euteliine genus represented in the Indo-Australian tropics has filiform antennae in the male. The bursa copulatrix in the female of apicifascia has a pair of scobinate signa, possibly a plesiomorphy within the genus; also species have the apophyses of the 8th segment apparently absent or fused with the ductus.

Typical Targalla, the Euteliella group, T. albiceps Hampson and T. transversa Candeze have on the forewing a distinctive black chevron, an intensification of the interior line of the postmedial, almost bracketing the reniform. This is most extreme in albiceps. In the other species the post-medial is curved at that point.

The Euteliella group is defined by the loss of the hook at the tip of the uncus, rather simple square valves and a multilobed vesica to the aedeagus, each lobe usually with a slender cornutus apically. The bursa copulatrix of the female is evenly scobinate, a character also seen in transversa. The type species of Euteliella is eriopoides Roepke, and the group contains three further species, all occurring in Borneo.

Typical Targalla includes the three species of the delatrix Guenée complex, augmented by a further Indian species that is named below for Dr. S. Sugi who alerted the author to the occurrence of the complex, and the revival of T. ludatrix Walker. The group also includes atripars Hampson and two species not represented in Borneo, T. bifacies Walker comb. n. (Sri Lanka) and T. repleta Walker comb. n. (S. India, Sri Lanka). All are relatively large species with the reniform and exterior dark chevron forming a characteristic dark area just distal to a pale, transverse, straight, oblique medial band. The zone basal to the medial band is usually darker than the ground colour of the wing distal to it. In the male genitalia the flexure of the tegumen is extreme; the hook of the uncus is sharply flexed; the interior of the generally oblong valves is complex and fused to the anellus; the aedeagus is long, the vesica containing several cornuti and a spined band. In the female genitalia the bursa copulatrix has several patches of coarse scobination basally. Species of this group have been recorded as feeding on various Myrtaceae as larvae.

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