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Asta Walker
Gen. rev.
Type
species: quadrilinea Walker,
Borneo.
See Avitta
above.
The male antennae are fasciculate, but the bristles are short.
The
hindwings can be conspicuously tufted in males. The forewings have four
straight, oblique fasciae, two each side of the punctate reniform, and a
fainter, zig-zag submarginal.
In the
male abdomen, there are hair pencils on each side of the base of the third
sternite. The distal margin of the eighth sternite is shallowly notched, and the
tergite is slightly tapered, lacking apodemes. In the genitalia, the uncus is
robust, strongly hooked, and there is a similarly robust scaphium. The tegumen
is about half as long again as the vinculum, which forms a broad saccus. The
valves are rather paddle-like and have a small central lobe that bears a tuft of
setae. The juxta is not well developed but could have elements of the inverted
‘V’ type. The aedeagus vesica is small but has a group of very small spines
distally.
The
female (Fig 321; completa Rothschild, given species status in treatment of quadrilinea
below)
has a prominent, diamond-shaped sclerite between the ovipositor lobes, better
developed than in other genera of the complex. The ostium is set at the anterior
of a transverse sclerite that completes the ring of the eighth segment. The
seventh sternite is only slightly shorter than the tergite; the posterior
corners of the tergite are only slightly produced laterally towards the sternite.
The ductus is long, narrow, spherical, with a slightly elongate, umbonate,
scobinate signum near its base.
The host
plant recorded for the type species (see below) is in the Lauraceae as in the
next genus, and the male genitalia features also indicate a closer association
with it rather than with Avitta.
Asta
puncta Wileman comb. n. (Japan) has facies similar to quadrilinea,
though the fasciation of the forewing is fainter and more broken, and similar
features in the male genitalia. It is stated to feed as a larva on Actinodaphne
(Lauraceae)
by Sugi (1987) and Hayashi (2003). Asta taiwana Wileman
comb.
n. (Taiwan)
has a similar external appearance and is therefore also transferred from Avitta,
though the male genitalia (Haruta, 1993: 73) are somewhat divergent from the
generic norm.
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