TRIBE LITHOSIINI
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“Eilema”prabana Moore
   
Lithosia prabana Moore, 1859 [1860], Cat. Lepid. Insects Mus. E. Ind. Co.: 304.
   
Lithosia nigricans Walker, 1862, J. Linn. Soc. (Zool.), 6:103.
   
Tmetoptera? costosa Felder & Rogenhofer, 1875, Reise öst. Fregatte Novara, pl. 
        139: 26, ?syn. n.
   
Lithosia lurida Snellen, 1879, Tijdschr. Ent., 22: 84.
   
Eilema prabana celebesa Tams, 1935, Mem. Mus. Hist. nat. Belg. (Hors serie), 4(12): 35.


"Eilema" prabana
(x 1.32)


Diagnosis.
This is a small, narrow-winged species, mostly dark blackish grey but with a narrow pale yellow forewing costa. It is larger and darker than Poliosia muricolor and relatives (see Poliosia muricolor).

Taxonomic notes. The taxon costosa is placed in synonymy, but it is not clear whether this had been done formally earlier. The type specimen (Moluccas) is placed in the series of prabana in the BMNH, but the taxon is not referred to by Hampson (1900), by Strand (1922, Lepidopterorum Catalogus 26), or included for Lithosiinae in the BMNH card index; Tmetoptera Felder is a monobasic Brazilian genus. The male genitalia are atypical of the Eilema complex, particularly the broad valves with unusual costal and ventral processes. The uncus and saccus are generally shorter, broader and blunter in the only Bornean male (slide 5462), and the aedeagus vesica has only one large patch of spines rather than two (the second is vestigial); nigricans may therefore merit subspecies status. The female has a heart-shaped scobinate pad posterior to the sterigma, and the bursa is large, but with a marked central constriction; there are two small scobinate signa distal to the constriction.

Geographical range. Java, Bali, Sumatra, Singapore, S. Burma, Borneo, Sulawesi, Sula Is., Moluccas.

Habitat preference. Bornean records appear restricted to the type material of nigricans, taken in Sarawak, probably in the lowlands, by A.R. Wallace, and a male from Semongok near Kuching, also in the lowlands.

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