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Daona
Walker
Type species:
mansueta
Walker
Synonyms: Byturna Moore (type species digramma Walker = mansueta); Gauzania Walker (type species mundalis Walker, Australia, = mansueta), praeocc. As discussed above, the genus is currently placed in the subfamily Phytometrinae of the Erebidae.
The facies of the species in the genus are as described below. The fasciation is similar to that seen in other genera of the Phytometrinae such as Phytometra Haworth: indeed Daona should certainly be included in any future revision of the type genus of the subfamily. The labial palps have the rectangular second segment directed forwards to half the head-length beyond the frons, with the tapering third segment equal in length but very much more slender, angled upwards from it. The male antennae are ciliate, and the tibiae of the fore- and hind-legs are tufted with scales distally. Phragma lobes between the first and second abdominal segments are shallow, vestigial.
The male abdomen has the eighth segment of a highly modified framed corematous type, with double coremata on each side of the sternite, separated by a central ridge of thickening, and with the tergite reduced to a bilobed plate that lacks apodemes. The sclerites of the seventh segment are larger than the rest, and have a deep intersegmental membrane separating them from the eighth segment. Both the tergite and the sternite have a triangular anterior zone slightly more heavily sclerotised than the rest, and the anterior margin of the sternite has a long, very slender, central apodeme (seen also in the type species of Antarchaea Hübner but not in Phytometra viridaria Clerck; Antarchaea is listed as a synonym of Phytometra by Poole (1989)). The genitalia have the valves triangular, broadening distally; there is a robust, hooked harpe centrally. The juxta is short, somewhat digitate. The saccus is slender, tapering.
The female genitalia are similar to those of Phytometra viridaria with a broad, uniformly sclerotised ductus bursae and an irregularly sausage-like corpus bursae that lacks any signum or scobination.
The genus as currently constituted (Poole, 1989) consists of the type species (including detersalis Walker), D. bilinealis Leech (China, Japan) and D. lactea Swinhoe (Pakistan). The former is similar in facies to the type species. The latter is placed in the BMNH curation and card index as a synonym of conicephala Staudinger, a species with a wide Ponto-Mediterranean distribution that is listed under Phytometra by Poole.
Edwards, in Nielsen et al. (1996), placed the genus in a broad concept of the Catocalinae (see above), but it was held over by Holloway (2005) for comparison with the Rivulinae and other genera in this part.
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