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Hypocala Guenée
Type
species: deflorata Fabricius,
India.
Species
of Hypocala
generally
are robust with relatively narrow, cryptically patterned forewings, and flash
coloration in yellow and black on the hindwings. The strongest marking on the
forewing is the generally biarcuate submarginal that cuts off the marginal zone
that can differ in colour from the rest of the wing, particularly in andamana
Wileman
and relatives. The hindwings have a distinctive pattern in most species, best
appreciated from the figures on Plate 11, though the andamana
group
has a more simple broad black border. The underside of fore- and hindwings is
marked with yellow and black, the black being a submarginal band and a discal
bar or spot in each case. There is more fawn and buff distal to the submarginal.
The abdomen is yellow, variably banded with black, but usually with a broad
black band just subapically. The male antennae are filiform with short cilia,
and the legs of that sex lack conspicuous scale-tufts. The labial palps have a
short, somewhat downturned third segment that gives the moth a slightly snouted
appearance.
The male
abdomen has the eighth segment much less heavily sclerotised than those anterior
to it, thickened in bands in places, though not in the ‘framed corematous’
manner. The seventh segment is modified in some species, e.g. a long spine from
one corner of the tergite in subsatura Guenée,
and with a circular notch in the posterior margin of the sternite in violacea
Butler. The apodemes of the basal
sternite are short, outwardly directed, with prominent flanges along the venulae
somewhat as in the Euteliinae (Holloway, 1985). The genitalia are also unusual
in structure. The uncus has highly complex ‘ears’ in most species. The
valves are deep, somewhat rectangular, with a variety of small lobes, spines and
flanges. The juxta forms a ring round the anellus and is not of the inverted
‘V’ type unless that part has been shortened to a vestige. The saccus is
moderately developed to (in subsatura)
very long. The aedeagus and vesica are very variable, but the latter can have
groups of spines and (andamana) at least one large diverticulum.
The
female of the type species has the ostium between the eighth and the unmodified
seventh segments. The ductus has a short sclerotised section and a long
membranous one that opens into a slightly pyriform and corrugated corpus bursae
that has an extensive elongate-ovate spined band distally and a much smaller one
opposite and set more basally. Just at the base of the bursa is a small,
pyriform appendix bursae.
The
genus is widespread in the Old World tropics, extending to the Pacific,
including Hawaii. There is one Neotropical species (Poole, 1989).
The
larva is cylindrical over the abdominal segments but tapers towards the head
over the thorax. All prolegs are fully developed. Host records (Miyata, 1983;
Robinson et al., 2001) are predominantly, but not exclusively, from Diospyros
(Ebenaceae).
The larvae often construct slight shelters of webbing in the leaves,
particularly in early stages, and pupate in a cell in the soil. The pupa lacks a
bloom.
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