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Eudocima
salaminia Cramer
Noctua
salaminia Cramer, [1777] 1779, Uitlandsche Kapellen,
2: 117.
Eudocima
salaminia Cramer; Holloway, 1976: 36.
Diagnosis.
This and the next species are characterised by dark green forewings with fawn
costal and distal margins. In salaminia these marginal zones are narrower, and the green
ground is paler. The hindwing black border is also narrower.
Geographical
range. Indo-Australian tropics to Samoa and Tonga.
Habitat
preference. Only three specimens have been recorded in recent surveys from:
forest at 200m near Tawau in Sabah; from 1465m on Bukit Retak in Brunei; from
2600m on G. Kinabalu.
Biology.
The larva was illustrated by Moore (1884-1887), Common (1990) and Tanahara &
Tanahara (2001b). It is blackish grey, posteriorly rather square, semi-looping
in gait. Below the spiracular level it is distinctly paler, and has a series of
three yellow-white marks subdorsally on each side of the first three abdominal
segments: a spot and two ocellate marks with broader white lunules anteriorly
and narrower, reddish lines completing the ring posteriorly. There is an oblique
line of the same yellow-white colour from the proleg backwards on A6.
Tanahara
& Tanahara noted a second form of larva in Okinawa. It is mottled and
speckled in shades of grey-brown and is diffusely paler in the line of the
spiracles. There is an oblique white line running back from the proleg on A6,
with black areas posterior to it above and below the line of the spiracles. The
ocellate marks are black but with much narrower rings (without an expanded
section) enclosing them. There is no white spot on A1. Moore (1881) illustrated
a variegated larva of this type but with ocellate marks more as in the first
form.
The host
plants noted by Common and Tanahara & Tanahara were Sarcopetalum
and
Stephania
(Menispermaceae),
and Robinson et al. (2001) recorded additionally Legnophora
and
Menispermum
(and
Tanahara & Tanahara recorded rejection of native (Okinawa) species of Cocculus and Sinomenium)
in the same family.
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