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Ercheia Walker
Type
species: diversipennis Walker,
Sri Lanka.
The
species are highly variable or sexually dimorphic, tending to have a rather
cryptic, bark-like pattern to the forewings, and more uniform hindwings that
have a characteristic array of white markings, most frequently a triangular
arrangement of white spots, two associated with a weaker postmedial band, the
third submarginal, distal to the more central of the postmedial ones. Sectors of
the marginal fringes are also often white. The forewing postmedial is usually
strongly but irregularly arched and may, with the submarginal, define a dark
trapezoidal patch based on the costa similar to that in members of the Parallelia
group
of genera (p. 53).
The
underside is generally paler, banded with dark brown broadly submarginally and
more narrowly postmedially. On the forewing the postmedial band often obscures
any discal mark, which is never as marked as the hindwing lunule, round which
the postmedial tracks a more sinuous course distal to it. The male antennae are
densely invested with very short cilia, and the forelegs have scale tufts to the
femur and tibia.
In the
male abdomen, the eighth segment is not modified. The genitalia have a
ball-and-claw apex to the uncus, and there is a scaphium. The juxta is of the
inverted ‘Y’ type. The valves are simple and of uniform structure throughout
the genus, tongue-like, slightly constricted centrally, with an exterior
hair-pencil at the base of the sacculus. The valve costa is cleft away slightly
at its apex, forming a small spur adjacent to the rounded valve apex. There is
no saccus. The aedeagus vesica is highly convolute, many of the diverticula
being scobinate or more coarsely spined.
In the
female, the ostium is set at the meeting point of the apex of the reduced,
triangular seventh sternite and the posterior corners of the corresponding
tergite. The ductus is narrow, unsclerotised. The corpus bursae is ovate,
slightly corrugated and generally scobinate, usually with an irregularly shaped
patch of corner scobination at the base.
The
genus is diverse in the Indo-Australian tropics, with a few species in Africa
and Madagascar.
Sevastopulo
(1948) noted a female of the type species to oviposit in grass, but the
hatchlings refused to feed on this and died; the records from fruiting trees
noted by Zhang (1994) probably derive from observations of adult feeding. The
eggs are almost spherical, with numerous vertical beaded ribs. The first instars
are long, slender, lacking prolegs on A3 and A4.
Japanese
species (Sugi, 1987) have Clematis (Ranunculaceae) and Wisteria
(Leguminosae)
as larval hosts; see also cyllaria Cramer below.
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