Diagnosis. See the previous species. The general coloration is a greyer brown, less rufous than in mediobrunnea. The sexual dimorphism is more striking, females being of an almost uniform medium brown within which the paler postmedial and antemedial fasciae on the forewing are more obvious. The chevron mark of the submarginal at the costa is the same in both sexes.
Taxonomic note. Lödl (1998a, 1999b) considered that sabada might be conspecific with mediobrunnea, but the facies is consistently different, and the male genitalia, though very similar, are relatively smaller, the valves having more even curvature costally and ventrally over the apical half such that they appear less incurved.
Habitat preference. This is an infrequent lowland species, most material seen being from the understorey of primary forest near the Danum Valley Field Centre in Sabah. There are single specimens from 600m at Poring near G. Kinabalu and from 1618m on Bukit Retak in Brunei, and two from lowland forest of the Barito Ulu in central Kalimantan. There are also two older specimens from Bidi in the lowlands of Sarawak.
