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Drapetodes Guenée
Type species: mitaria Guenée. India to Taiwan and Singapore.
Species of Drapetodes resemble those in the genera immediately
preceding by having obliquely lineated forewing markings, but differ in the
smoothly curved, rather than bifalcate or angled, forewing margins. The male
antennae are weakly unipectinate, the pectinations broad, lamellate, as in Phalacra.
However, in D. magnifica Swinhoe they are simply lamellate.
In the male abdomen the eighth segment is only weakly modified, with
slight strengthening of the anterior margins, the sternite much narrower than
the tergite. The uncus is deeply bifid, the components of varying breadth. The
gnathus is apically developed into a characteristically long, slender, often
curved spine. The valves are simple, relatively small, often rather oblong and
may have corematous structures on their exterior surface. The saccus is small,
digitate.
In the female the ovipositor lobes are simple, the sterigma unmodified.
The ductus bursae is long, the bursa ovate, without signa.
In D. magnifica, whilst the wing facies is consistent with
placement in the genus, the abdominal features are atypical: a more extensively
modified eighth segment, large, tapering valves, a broad saccus, vestigial
gnathus and ornamented aedeagus apex and vesica in the male; ornamented sterigma
and pair of signa in the female. It appears to be intermediate in characters
between Drapetodes and Phalacra.
The genus is restricted to the Oriental tropics, except for D.
deumbrata Warren (Java, Bali), or a related species, in Seram.
The larva of the type species in Taiwan was illustrated by Wang (1995).
It is shades of pale grey and dark brown, slightly broader at the junction of
the thoracic and abdominal segments, and with small spined scoli at least
laterally on each segment. The head has a horizontal bar of brown round the
front. There is a dorsal brown band that expands and darkens from the back of
the head to about A3 where it is equally divided by a pale grey band, but
continues narrowly on each side laterally to about A7. The pale grey dorsum is
itself broken by a dark brown, elliptical saddle over the posterior segments,
flanked anteriorly by a pair of oblique black dashes. There is irregular
longitudinal variegation within all these bolder pattern elements. The suranal
process is moderate, spiny. The host-plant recorded was Hedychium (Zingiberaceae),
a family also recorded for another species below.
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