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Psimada Walker
Type
species: quadripennis Walker,
India.
The
general facies is similar to that of species in the Mecodina
Guenée
complex (see below), with a trapezoidal subapical mark on the forewing costa.
The male antennae are distinctly laminate as well as slightly swollen over a
broad central section that makes them appear strongly swollen in some
orientations. The lower clypeofrons is unscaled, and there are prominent phragma
lobes at the anterior margin of the second tergite, hence the similarities with Ramadasa
Moore
noted below are probably convergent. The male fore-tibia is tufted.
The male
abdomen has the eighth sternite very much broader than the tergite, shallowly
triangular with the distal apex bilobed and with lateral rods extending from the
other angles. The tergite is narrow with generally paddle-shaped sclerotisation.
The genitalia have the uncus slender, opposed by a scaphium. The valves are
massive, rather sausage-shaped, and extend down adjacent to the saccus, where
their ventral margins support long hair pencils. There are no processes to the
valves, but the margins have a narrow, tyre-like thickening. The aedeagus is
broad, with a patch of spined corrugation apically. The vesica is large with
several lobes, scobinate, the most basal very coarsely so. The most distal lobe
has a row of much more massive cornuti. The valve shape is reminiscent of that
in some ariolicine Nolidae and in Ramadasa
Moore
(possibly Bagisarinae as discussed on p. 26), though the tyre-like thickening is
distinctive.
The
female has a broad ostium between the seventh and eighth segments, opening into
a semicircular chamber from which a short, narrow ductus links to a massive,
broadly sausage-shaped corpus bursae. This last is slightly convolute,
corrugated, scobinate and sclerotised over the basal half, and has a narrow,
longitudinal band of small spines in the distal half. The general structure is
also similar to that found in Ramadasa.
As well
as the type species, the genus includes P. herlinadiehlae Kobes
(Sumatra), a similar undescribed species from Sulawesi, a Bornean species
transferred from Mecodina
Guenée
and an undescribed species from Fergusson I. off New Guinea.
The
biology of the type species is described below.
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