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Albinospila
Gen. n.
Type species: floresaria
Walker.
Species in this genus
have traditionally been referred to Prasinocyma Warren (type species vermicularia
Guenée, S.W. Africa) but this generic concept must probably be restricted
to the rather uniform, sea-green African species that resemble the type species.
These are mostly characterised in the male genitalia by a valve with a strongly
sclerotised and variably ornamented saccular part and a distal portion, the
ventral margin of which bears a lobe similar to that seen in Maxates Moore
and Pseudocomostola
Gen.n.
Numerous Australasian
species attributed to Prasinocyma are misplaced and require review:
available genus-group names are Endemia Warren (type species tenera Warren),
Pauresthes Warren (type species caniola Warren), Poecilostigma Warren
(type species vagabunda Warren) and Pyrrhaspis Warren (type
species coerulea Warren). All four type species are from New Guinea.
Several species were transferred to Orothalassodes
Gen.n, and more
may prove better placed in genera of the Thalassodes complex.
The
group of small species discussed here does not fall readily into any of these
categories. They are an apple green colour, with broken white fasciation, a
white forewing costa, and dark reddish discal spots and marginal lining in the
spaces between the veins. Apart from the white fasciae, there is some general
resemblance to Oenospila
Swinhoe species. The male antennae are
bipectinate to two thirds, the pectinations moderate, neat, tapering away
distally.
The male genitalia have
a valve costal ornamentation reminiscent of that in Idiochlora, though
the setal patch on the third abdominal sternite is more as in Berta
Walker,
sparse and central. The socii are short and rather rounded. There is a small,
digitate harpe on the sacculus. The type species lacks coremata but they are
present in others.
The female has
ovipositor lobes of the modified type, and the signum is bicornute. The ductus
and bursa are only moderate in size, and the sterigma is unmodified.
Apart from the type
species the genus is restricted to the Australasian tropics, including also: A.
laticostata Warren comb. n. (New Guinea); A. syntyche Prout comb. n.
(New Guinea); A. oxycentra Meyrick comb. n. (Queensland); A.
rhodostigma Warren comb. n. (Bismarcks, Solomons) A. ornatifimbria Warren
comb. n. (Solomons).
Bigger (1988) described
and illustrated the larva of A. rhodostigma. It is slender, stick-like,
with a biconical head as in other Hemitheiti. It is green with red lateral and
dorsal lines, the former replaced by bands of white dots in the final instar.
The host-plants are
species of Terminalia (Combretaceae).
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