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Ilyrgis Walker
Type
species: echephurealis Walker,
Sri Lanka.
This
genus, Parilyrgis Bethune-Baker and the next two genera are
characterised by small, rather delicate mauvish grey species with angled or
bifalcate forewings and bipectinate male antennae.
Ilyrgis
species
have the ground of the wings relatively uniform, with fine, irregular white
antemedial, postmedial and submarginal fasciae on the forewing, these tending to
broaden at the costa. The hindwings are angled marginally at CuA2, with more
diffuse pale postmedial and submarginal fasciae similarly
angled. The labial palps are upcurved, the second
segment long, erect, the third less than half its length and angled slightly
forwards.
The male
abdomen has an eighth segment of the framed corematous type, though rather
weakly expressed. The genitalia have the uncus somewhat bulbous towards the
apex. The valves are simple, tongue-like (the type species) or with slight steps
in the centre of the costal and saccular margins, the valve narrowing beyond
where they occur (costinotata). The aedeagus is short, slightly
curved. with an ovate vesica, large and extensively spined in costinotata,
but moderate and much more sparsely spined, the spines shorter, in the type
species.
In the
female genitalia (type species) the ostium is between the seventh and eighth
segments. The ductus bursae is as long as the seventh segment, slender,
unsclerotised. The corpus bursae is pyriform, densely invested with short spines
over its distal half.
The
genus consists of the two species below and capnosia Hampson
(New Guinea), but the placement in it of other species from New Guinea, Africa
and Madagascar listed by Poole (1989) needs checking.
The only
Australian representative amongst the four genera, Goniocraspedon
mistura Swinhoe, is assigned to the Hypeninae in Nielsen et
al. (1996),
though Nye (1975), Inoue et al. (1982) and Poole (1989) retained them in the
Ophiderinae. The angling of the hindwing submarginal, the simple valve
structure, the spining in the vesica of some males and in the ductus bursae of
some females in the group is perhaps more typical of Herminiinae than Hypeninae.
Indeed, Forbes (1954) regarded the very similar New World genus Redectis Nye (= Dercetis Grote,
praeocc.)
as one of the more primitive of the Herminiinae, a placement retained by Poole
(1989). Ectogonia
butleri Leech (see below) is noted to prefer dried leaves of its hosts, a
further herminiine characteristic.
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