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Britha
Walker
Type species:
biguttata
Walker, Queensland.
Synonyms: Gravodos Rothschild (type species robinsoni Rothschild, Sumatra); Hyposemeia Hampson (type species incertalis Walker, Java = biguttata).
This genus was placed in Hypeninae by Edwards in Nielsen et al. (1996) but listed under Herminiinae by Lödl (1999e).
The species are small, Hypena-like in build, the labial palps porrect, about three times as long as the head. The male antennae are fasciculate or narrowly to moderately bipectinate. The general colour is grey to brownish grey, the forewings with a series of three oblique darker fasciae that have paler zones immediately distal to them (weak or absent for the antemedial). The phragma lobes between the first two abdominal tergites are large, rounded.
The male abdomen has the eighth segment unmodified. In the genitalia the valves are narrow, tapering and show bilateral asymmetry, that on the left only having a slender, digitate process from the costa subapically, and both having costal processes subbasally in the two Bornean species.
Females have the ostium distinctly drawn forward from the eighth segment. The ductus is long, the bursa slightly ovate, with the ductus seminalis arising from a sclerotised appendix at its base.
The genus contains one widespread Indo-Australian species and three Oriental ones. Two are known from Borneo. There is also one species in Africa (Poole, 1989).
Sugi (1987) illustrated the larva of B. inambitiosa Leech in Japan. It is long, slender, slightly tapering at each end and appears to show some reduction of the anterior pairs of prolegs. Early instars are green with a whitish dorsolateral line, and later ones become extensively blackish with some fine mottling, the dorsolateral lines remaining paler but more a dull green. The host plant was Pterostyrax (Styracaceae).
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