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Mesosciera Hampson
Type
species: typica Hampson,
Ghana.
The
facies of the type species is also as described below for orientalis
Hampson.
The male antennae are ciliate. The labial palps are relatively short, extending
only slightly beyond the head.
The male
abdomen of orientalis (no males of the type species were available) has the
sclerites of the eighth segment with their distal margins slightly bilobed and
with apodemes on the tergite, but otherwise unmodified. The genitalia have the
uncus long, slender, almost straight, with a small apical spur. The valves are
robustly sclerotised, complexly folded, tapering distally. The interior margins
of the valves are closely associated over some distance, overlapping the juxta
which is of the inverted ‘V’ type. The saccus is narrow, apically square.
The aedeagus vesica is small, narrow.
The
female of orientalis has the ostium set within the posterior margin of the
seventh segment. The ductus is long, obtusely angled centrally. The pyriform
corpus bursae is set asymmetrically on it, with the ductus seminalis arising
from a slightly reflexed lobe at its base. There is delicate scobination
throughout the bursa but no signum. The type species is similar but has a
shorter ductus, unless the part of the ductus distal to the angle in orientalis
is
the narrowed basal part of the corpus bursae (which would put the origin of the
ductus seminalis in a similar position in each).
There is
one further African species in addition to the type species and the one below.
Poole (1989) included a further African species, picta
Hampson,
in the genus, but this is arranged as a synonym of Bonaberiana crassisquama Strand,
together with Saroba
cyanescens Hampson, in the BMNH collection.
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