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This
tribe contains genera of moderate to large species with a characteristic
forewing shape that has a strongly sinuous dorsal margin with a lobe between the
antemedial and postmedial fasciae and a slight hook or falcation at the tornus.
The postmedial is usually strongly oblique over at least its posterior half and
intersects the dorsum between more or less centrallized two thirds. The tibiae
are not spined.
The
tongue is distinctly modified as discussed on p. 10, being robust, sharp, with
erectile spines as barbs to facilitate the piercing of the tough skins of fruit
and, in the case of Calyptra Ochsenheimer, mammals.
The male
abdomen has an eighth segment of the framed, corematous type. The genitalia have
valves with extensive marginal thickening around a central lacuna, sometimes
with processes from this thickened area, particularly the inner margin of the
sacculus. The juxta is a hard plate, often lobed or divided dorsally, and
sometimes also ventrally, but never as an inverted ‘V’ structure. The
aedeagus vesica tends to be simple, the diverticula usually short if present,
and cornuti and zones of spining are frequently encountered.
The
female genitalia have the ostium associated more with the eighth segment,
sometimes within a complex sterigma. The apodemes of the eighth segment are
reduced or lost in some of the genera.
The
larvae are variable in the extent to which abdominal prolegs are reduced, with
those on A3 only moderately reduced in Calyptra,
more strongly so, with slight reduction of those on A4, in Oraesia Guenée
and Eudocima
Billberg,
but with those on both segments absent in Plusiodonta Guenée.
The larvae are strikingly marked in all Oriental genera, with ocellate marks in Eudocima.
Pupation
is in a roomy cell made from leaves lined with silk in all Bornean genera except
Plusiodonta, where a denser, spindle-shaped cocoon incorporating
detritus is attached to a twig or bark. The pupae do not have a powdery bloom.
The host
plants are predominantly in the Menispermaceae.
The
Phyllodini (see below) share several features with the Calpini and may be
closely related. Their separation in previous treatments may be largely due to
the presence of tibial spining in the adults,
though Berio (1959) united them in his phylum of Miniodes.
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