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Nodaria
Guenée
Type species:
hispanalis
Guenée (= nodosalis Herrich-Schäffer), Spain.
The species are small, with dark, blackish grey forewings crossed by fine, darker, irregular fasciae: a transverse antemedial and a sigmoid postmedial. The reniform is also black, and there is a punctate white submarginal, often with a slightly larger spot subdorsally. The hindwings are pale, whitish, with darker suffusion, particularly towards the margin and picking out some veins.
The male antennae have a distinctive node just short of the centre, where about ten flagellomeres are shortened, broadened, laminate, with a single twist and a dense covering of scales (Owada, 1987). The male foreleg is sheathed, the tarsus with five segments, the most basal with a tuft of yellowish hairs.
In the male abdomen, the eighth segment is of the framed corematous type but only moderately developed. The genitalia have valves that are rather broad at the base, with a triangular saccular process separated from the rest by a wide concavity. The apical part of the valve is bifid or bilobed. The anellus has patches of spines on each side. The aedeagus vesica is diverticulate rather than globular and the diverticula can bear a variety of scobination and patches of spines.
The female genitalia are typical of the genera where the male has a foreleg sheath, but there is relatively even and extensive coarse scobination in the bursa.
The genus extends from the Mediterranean to Africa and through the Indo-Australian tropics to China, Japan, Australia, the Solomons and New Caledonia. Many species have been described in Nodaria in the past, and those remaining in it as listed by Poole (1989) include many that do not exhibit the definitive characters noted above, particularly the characteristic node of the male antenna. Prout (1928) considered externalis Guenée to be the only true Nodaria in the Indo-Australian area, though, as discussed below, it proves to be a species complex. Six of those listed by Poole are referred to under other genera here: cornicalis Fabricius (below and p. 113); discisigna Moore (p. 138); kona Swinhoe (p. 136); maculipex Hampson (p. 134); mundiferalis Walker (p. 125); porphyrialis Pagenstecher (p. 140). In the Australian checklist (Nielsen et al., 1996), pratti Bethune-Baker and acrosema Turner are placed as synonyms of simplex Lucas in Hypena Schrank, and nyctichroa Turner is placed in Parilyrgis Bethune-Baker (see also Holloway (2005: 445)). In addition to the type species and those discussed below, the following are genuine Nodaria: aneliopis Turner (Queensland); dentilineata Draeseke (W. China); ogasawarensis Owada (Ogasawara (Bonin) Is.); tristis Butler (Japan, Korea, China); zemella Strand (Taiwan; Owada (1994)). N. fracturalis Snellen (Sulawesi) appears from the original illustration to be a Simplicia.
The larvae feed on dead leaves, and the adults are recorded more in disturbed, open and cultivated habitats rather than in rainforest.
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