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Blenina Walker
Type
species: accipens
Walker (= lucretia
Dalman), Sri
Lanka, Australia.
Synonyms: Amrella Moore (type species
angulipennis
Moore, India); Eliocroea
Walker (type species
chrysochlora Walker, Moluccas).
These are robust moths with cryptic, rather lichenous, grey or green and grey
variegated forewings. The hindwings on the upperside are either pale (sometimes
yellow) with a broad dark border or dark brown to black with a sinuous yellow or
orange band medially that does not reach the costal or dorsal margins. The
undersides of all wings usually have a pale ground with dark brown bands: a
broad border and a narrower medial band.
The venation is of the groundplan type but M3 and CuA1 are connate in the
hindwing.
The male abdomen has the basal margins of the eighth tergite and sternite
excavate. There are weak hair pencils on the seventh segment. The apodemes of
the basal sternite are expanded (Figs 493, 524) but not carinate. The genitalia
have several diagnostic features. The uncus is narrow, rather rectangular; the
subscaphium is strongly developed, distinctly bilobed. The valves are
paddle-like, sometimes with a subbasal costal process (e.g.
quinaria
Moore), but always with a slender curved process arising from the saccular area
that terminates in an expanded structure rather like the head of a bird. The
valve has a distinct thinned area in the lamina just distal to this. The
exterior of the base of the valve supports an extensive corema. The aedeagus
vesica contains usually one cornutus, occasionally more.
The female genitalia are simple with an elongate ductus and bursa, no signum,
and with the ostium opening into the virtually complete ring of the eighth
segment.
The larva tends to be cylindrical, moderately stout, the primary setae on pinacula that may be coloured differently from the generally apple-green or leaf
green body.
Larval host plants include several records for Diospyros (Ebenaceae) but
species also feed on Pterocarya (Juglandaceae) and Shorea (Dipterocarpaceae)
(Sugi, 1987; Robinson et al., 2001; see below).
The genus is found through the Indo-Australian tropics to as far east as Fiji
and Tonga (Holloway, 1979) and north to Japan. The species are usually rather
widespread, and the five in Borneo represent the greatest richness anywhere in
the range except for New Guinea. There are also a few Afrotropical species.
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