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Labanda Walker
Type
species: herbealis
Walker, Sri Lanka.
Synonyms: Bariana
Walker (type species
submuscosa
Walker, Java); Gerbatha
Walker (type species
laticincta
Walker = semipars
Walker, Sri Lanka);
Lazanda
Walker (type species
fasciata
Walker, India); Pseudalea
Turner (type species
macrogastris
Turner = huntei
Warren, Queensland).
This and the next three genera have features of build and male genitalia in
common as discussed on pp. 140-141.
The build is delicate, the forewings rather narrow, the abdomen, particularly in
males, extending well beyond the hindwings in a spread specimen. The male
antennae are usually filiform, but two species have them bipectinate (umbrosa
Hampson and viridumbrosa
sp. n.). The venation is of the groundplan type. The forewings have a
cryptic, variegated pattern in shades of brown or green, paler components of the
irregular fasciae often being conspicuous. The hindwings are usually a uniform
dark brown.
The male abdomen has the seventh segment elongated relative to the rest, and the sclerites of the eighth segment are modified, their basal margins cleft and
bilobed. The genitalia are highly distinctive, but remarkably uniform through
the genus, specific differences being minor and mainly in the aedeagus vesica.
The uncus is short, rather rectangular, the gnathal arms leading into a
thread-like subscaphium. The tegumen is elongate on each side, with a slight
central flexure and a zone of large setal scars in the section ventral to the
flexure. The transtilla and saccular shield are rather elongate, the valves
arising from a narrow neck, paddle-like but folded so the ventral margin, with
its numerous rows of small peg-like structures, overlaps the costal zone
including the subbasal process. There are long setae on broad scars just distal
to the subbasal process (Fig 429). There is a short saccus, stepped in on each
side to produce a narrower apical component. The aedeagus is long, narrow with a
spatulate basal part and a vesica with small cornuti.
In the female genitalia the lamella antevaginalis is developed as a setose pad, often diamond-shaped and distally
bilobed or cleft, the ductus is short, the bursa small, rather rectangular, with
a cluster of moderate spines at its centre, directed basad; such a cluster is
present in some, but not all, species as mentioned later.
The greatest diversity is Oriental,
possibly in Borneo where further species may await description and discovery as
discussed below, but the genus attenuates eastwards to the Solomons and
Queensland.
Bell (MS) reared species in India such as
semipars
Walker. The larva is light grey with black transverse bands, and strongly
suffused yellow. The head is yellow, somewhat heart-shaped. The body is slender,
cylindrical, only slightly broader centrally. The prolegs are all present.
Primary setae only occur. Gardner (1948a) also reared semipars and gave
details of the chaetotaxy.
The larvae live stretched out on the undersides of the young leaves that they
eat. They are somewhat sluggish. Pupation is on the underside of a leaf or
elsewhere, in a slender, boat-shaped cocoon, with tapering processes extending
fore and aft from the extremities of the ‘deck’, with one end of the ‘hull’ more
or less vertical, the other curving convexly under like the bow of a boat.
Viewed from above, the cocoon is lenticular. The cocoon is of densely woven,
light orange silk, but the processes are medium brown or purplish, with this
colour extending round the ‘deck’ as a dark line. The pupa is broadly rounded
anteriorly, three times as long as broad, the posterior end also broadly
rounded, lacking hooklets but beaded with longitudinal ridges along the anterior
margin of the terminal segment. No rustling was noted for pupae in the genus,
despite this beading.
The host plant was Diospyros (Ebenaceae), as it was also for L.
achine
Felder, another species reared by Bell. Gardner (1948a) reared
semipars
from Glochidion (Euphorbiaceae).
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