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Trigonodes
cephise Cramer
Noctua
cephise Cramer, [1779] 1782, Uitlandsche Kapellen,
3: 59.
Trigonodes
maxima Guenée, 1852, Hist. Nat. Insectes, Spec. gén. Lépid.
7:
282.
Chalciope
cephise ab. cephisoides Strand,
1917, Arch.
Naturgesch., 82 (A2): 40.
Chalciope
saina Swinhoe, 1918, Ann. Mag. nat. Hist. (9) 2:
80.
Chalciope
cephise cephisiodes Gaede, 1938, Gross-Schmett. Erde.,
11: 490.
Trigonodes
cephise Cramer; Kobes, 1985: 47.
Trigonodes
cephise 
(Burma)
Trigonodes
cephise |
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Diagnosis.
See the previous species. There is some sexual dimorphism. Females have the
distal black triangle broken into a subcostal streak and a submarginal band with
a curved inner border; the oblique pale bar dividing the two black triangles in
the male is thus expanded into a triangular area in the female.
Taxonomic
note. The taxon cephisiodes Gaede ex Strand (not noted as promoted
from infrasubspecific level by Nielsen et
al. (1996))
has yellower ground colour and much reduced brown banding on the hindwing. The
male genitalia have bilaterally symmetric processes from the juxta and on the
valves; these are asymmetric in cephise.
The few specimens seen are from Thailand and Burma. If these differences in the
genitalia prove constant, then cephisiodes
is
probably a distinct species. The taxon saina Swinhoe was included as a good species in
Chalciope
Hübner
by Poole (1989), but is merely a subspecies (see below) of cephise, having identical male genitalia.
Geographical
range. Indo-Australian tropics to N. Australia, the Caroline Is., Samoa
and New Caledonia, with the darker ssp. saina
on
Nias and other islands on the south west of Sumatra.
Habitat
preference. There are two old specimens labelled 'Borneo' from the F. Moore
collection, and two more from Tenom and G. Kinabalu in Sabah but without more
precise data. The species has not been taken in recent surveys.
Biology.
The larva in Samoa was illustrated by Comstock (1966). It is typically ophiusine,
an elongate semi-looper with only the prolegs on A5 and A6 functional.
The
ground colour is a creamy tan, striped and streaked longitudinally with darker
brown, the only really unbroken stripe being a double dorsal red-brown one.
The pupa
has a bluish white powdery bloom.
The host
plant recorded was Vigna (Leguminosae).
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