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Arrade
Walker
Type species:
erebusalis
Walker, Sri Lanka.
Synonyms: Larassa Walker (type species condecoralis Walker, Queensland = leucocosmalis Walker); Lophocraspedon Hampson (type species cristatum Hampson, Sri Lanka); Madoce Walker (type species leucocosmalis Walker, Queensland); Ziza Walker (type species ostentalis Walker, Borneo) syn. n.
Poole (1989) treated Ziza as a distinct monobasic genus, but morphological features indicate it is congeneric with Arrade as in the unpublished BMNH curatorial arrangement and card index. Edwards in Nielsen et al. (1996) placed Madoce and Larassa as synonyms but also excluded Ziza.
The narrow wings and general facies of the species suggest that the genus might belong to the Hypenodinae, and abdominal features of both sexes might also be consistent with this, but ocelli are present. The male antennae are filiform. The labial palps are straight, directed anteriorly to twice the length of the head, the third segment narrower than the second and only a third to a half of the length.
In the radial sector of the forewings, R1 and R5 arise independently from the cell. The intervening veins are reduced to two (or the third is vestigial), their separation being relatively distal, with a long common stalk. Facies features are described in the accounts of the three Bornean species.
The eighth segment of the male abdomen in ostentalis is a modified and delicate form of the framed corematous type. The sternite has the frame elongate and constricted inwards at two-thirds. The basal part of the frame is strongly indented centrally. Unusual, rugose, spine-like strips extend across to its distal end from the tergite. The genitalia have a long, slender uncus, the basal half straight and the distal half hooked. The valves are also long and slender, narrowing at their centre or just beyond, with a short saccular spur at this point, adjacent to the base of a very narrow, digitate but flat distal portion. The aedeagus is small, and the vesica lacks conspicuous ornamentation.
The female genitalia have rather square ovipositor lobes. The ostium is at the gently curved posterior margin of the seventh sternite from which the sclerotised portion of the ductus (antrum) tapers gently away (to about the anterior margin of the seventh sternite in erebusalis). There is a narrow extension of the ductus beyond this, then the elongate corpus bursae expands gently from there into a pyriform distal section. In this section there is a signum, broad and crescent-shaped in the type species, more tongue-like in ostentalis and cristatum, and a much more basally situated spine in rudisella Walker (where the ostium and ductus are also highly convoluted).
The genus has its greatest diversity in the Indo-Australian tropics, extending to Samoa and Tonga, but Poole (1989) also listed two African species and three from Central America and the Caribbean.
Poole included Madoce lineatula Walker from Sarawak in Madoce, stating that the type material was (or should be) in OUMNH. However, this taxon is not listed in the unpublished catalogue of types produced by I. Lansbury (1970); the BMNH index card is annotated ‘type lost’. The original description (1863, List Specimens lepid. Insects Colln Br. Mus., 27: 118) is not detailed enough to establish the identity of the species.
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