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Batracharta Walker
Type
species: obliqua Walker,
Borneo.
Synonyms: Carissa
Walker
(type species cossoides Walker,
Borneo); Pilosocrures
Hampson
(type species variegata Hampson = obliqua Walker).
The
species share a characteristic forewing shape and facies, the costa being
shallowly concave and the apex and distal margin distinctly rounded; the tornus
is usually slightly falcate. The facies consists usually of an irregularly
shaped basal block of dark indigo blue, with a more speckled and browner distal
zone. The basal block extends broadly along the costa in several species. The
hindwings are generally a paler brown with a diffusely darker discal mark that
is more clearly defined and darker on the underside. The male antennae are
fasciculate, and the mid-tibia is densely tufted with scales. The labial palps
are straight and of the standard catocaline type.
In the
male abdomen, the eighth segment has a pair of long apodemes and, with these, is
shaped like a two-stemmed wine glass. The sternite is angularly ovate, being
narrowed more sharply anteriorly to a weakly trilobed margin, and the distal
margin is weakly bilobed. The genitalia are similarly distinctive, with the
tegumen somewhat longer than the narrower vinculum, though the interaction
between these sclerites and the valve bases on each side is complex. The valves
are large, broad, somewhat triangular, with an expanded, more rounded basal
portion exteriorly that is invested with long hair-setae in some species. The
interaction of the juxta with the sacculus is difficult to interpret, but the
former could be of the inverted ‘V’ type. The aedeagus is small with a
narrow vesica that bears subbasal scobination associated with a small but
complex sclerotisation.
The
female has the ostium between the eighth and seventh segments slightly expanded
but unmodified. The seventh sternite is slightly smaller than the tergite.
The
ductus bursae is long, narrow, unsclerotised, and the corpus bursae is
spherical, slightly corrugated and finely scobinate throughout, but with this
scobination coarsened and more sclerotised in some species into one or two signa,
one subbasally and subapically.
The
genus is diverse in the Oriental tropics.
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