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Nishada
Moore
Type
species: flabrifera Moore, India.
Synonym: Petalopleura Meyrick
(type species phaeocephala Meyrick, New Guinea = impervia Walker).
Nishada species
are, with a few exceptions, largely unmarked beige or yellowish moths with
rather deep forewings and, relative to them, short hindwings. The shortness of
the hindwings is more developed in males where the subcostal area is expanded
and androconial. The wing venation is illustrated in Figs 2f, g.
Fig 2f: Nishada sambara Walker
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Fig 2g: Nishada syntomioides
Walker
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The male abdomen typically
has several distinctive features, such as a paired pouched structure on the
third tergite, a small eighth segment with a reinforced basal margin and, on the
valves of the male genitalia, a massive spine-like process arising from the
costa subbasally. The aedeagus is slender, typically without cornuti.
The female genitalia have
the ductus long, narrow, with the ductus seminalis arising distally from it. The
corpus bursae is mostly spherical but may have a neck continuing from the ductus. There are two small, sharply umbonate
signa.
The genus extends throughout
the Indo-Australian tropics.
The life history of the type
species in Java was described and illustrated by Piepers & Snellen (1904).
It is black dorsally and light grey ventrally, with brown warts laterally on
each segment. The body is covered densely with black hairs, and there is a brush
of longer hairs on each side of T1. The intersegmental membranes are
milky-white, seen mainly when the larva crawls, particularly between the
anterior abdominal segments.
The host-plant is a species
of moss that grows on moist walls. Pupation is in a loose cocoon and takes ten
days to emergence of the adult.
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