|
Westermannia
Hübner
Type
species: superba Hübner, Java.
Synonyms: Plusiodes Guenée (type species westermannii Guenée,
unnecessary replacement name for superba).
The genus in strict sense can be defined on a rather striking, silvered and
glistening grey, brown and black forewing pattern that includes a medial
figure-8 surrounded by paler colour that runs out to a rather angled or sinuous
ostmedial.
The male genitalia typically have
the uncus strong, moderate to
long, the valves plain, large, rather elliptcal, lacking coremata, harpe or
other structures. The vinculum and saccus are short. The aedeagus vesica usually
has fields of cornuti that can be modified into deciduous spicules that can be
found in the bursa of a mated female.
The female genitalia typically have a very short ductus with a colliculum and a
long corpus bursae with a smaller appendix bursae at its distal end. The corpus
bursae contains, distally and basally, parallel pairs of scobinate bands of
sclerotisaton, the spines on each directed away from the common axis.
The larvae of two species are described below. Host-plant records are almost all
from Terminalia in the Combretaceae (Yunus & Ho, 1980; unpublished IIE
records; see individual species below and Robinson et al., 2001).
The genus extends throughout the Indo-Australian tropics to as far east as
New Caledonia (Holloway, 1979), with
W.
poupa
Holloway, an endemic species with valves that are cleft almost in two. The
relationship of included African species (Poole, 1989) to this strict definition
or to that of the next genus, included by Poole but separated by Kobes (1997),
needs investigation.
<<Back
>>Forward <<Return
to Content Page
|
