SUBFAMILY HYPENINAE
View Image Gallery of Subfamily Hypeninae

Pseuderosia humiliata Walker
     Acidalia humiliata Walker, 1861, List Specimens lepid. Insects Colln Br. Mus., 23: 768.
 

Pseuderosia humiliata


The holotype female of this species (OUMNH, no 1799) lacks its right forewing and also its abdomen. It is not listed by Poole (1989), but it was assigned to the hypenine (Nye, 1975) or ophiderine (Poole, 1989) genus Micreremites Warren by Swinhoe (1900: 206). However, the facies prompted memories of photographs of an unidentified palm-feeding (Elaeis; oil-palm) species of Drepanidae from Sumatra taken by Dr R. Desmier de Chenon. Location of prints of these photographs revealed a perfect match. The species is therefore transferred to Pseuderosia Snellen, the genus to which it appears to be closest (Holloway, 1998: 46). The larva is typical of the palm-feeding drepanid group and bears some resemblance to that of the generic type species in structure, such as shape and distribution of setose scoli, but has a transverse black band on A1, breaking up the longitudinal banding, rather than balloon-like structures in the vicinity of A2-3. The head is pinkish fawn, with dark brown or black vertical stripes that converge on the vertex. The body has a broad purplish dorsal band, broken by double black bars on each segment; it is flanked by narrower cream bands that enclose the subdorsal scoli, but these are discontinued across A1 and much of A2, though the scoli of the latter are cream. The rest of the body is a variegated pale brown with vertical pairs of black spots laterally on A3-5, with a broader blotch on A6 and a single one on A2. The scoli match the colour of the skin where they arise, but the setae are generally black. Pupation is in a silken cell in the rolled end of a leaf pinna. The pupa is pale brown, with the dorsal pattern of the larva retained in cream and red.

<<Back >>Forward <<Return to Content Page


Copyright © Southdene Sdn. Bhd. All rights reserved.