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Bastilla Swinhoe
Type
species: redunca Swinhoe = hamatilis Guenée,
Australasian tropics.
Synonyms: Naxia
Guenée
(type species absentimacula Guenée, Java) praeocc.;
Xiana
Nye
(replacement name for Naxia).
This
genus now contains probably the bulk of the old Indo-Australian “Parallelia”,
also
a major group in Africa referred to Caranilla Moore by Berio, (1965a, 1978), and
possibly some New World species (Holloway & Miller, 2003). The
Indo-Australian fauna also falls into a number of groupings, such as the moviana
Stoll
group studied in particular detail by Holloway & Miller, but also one that
includes the last three Bornean species described below, crameri
Moore
group; the two Bornean members of the joviana group are treated first.
Bastilla
species
mostly have a more contrasted forewing facies, with the trapezoidal mark and the
area between the medial and postmedial fasciae conspicuously darker. The genus
is best defined by the male genitalia which combine bilateral symmetry with
double or even treble coremata on the valves. The uncus is usually simple,
though a superuncus occurs in most African species and in the crameri
group.
The costal and saccular valve processes are well separated in Achaea,
the latter slender, rod-like. The costal process is usually long, with distal
expansion and / or ornamentation. The juxta is often short, broad, often
somewhat H-shaped. The aedeagus is curved (strongly angled in the crameri group);
the vesica is variable in shape but the diverticula usually bear some robust
spines or cornuti, sometimes in groups.
The
female genitalia offer no clear generic features, though the antevaginal plate
is always well developed; in the crameri group
it is completely divided into two tongue-like lobes that flank the ostium.
The
larvae of several species are described below. The pupa always has a powdery
bloom. Host records are predominantly (but not exclusively) from the
Euphorbiaceae, particularly Phyllanthus (Holloway & Miller, 2003).
B.
simillima Guenée (India to Sumatra) was assigned by Holloway & Miller
(2003) to the major African group of the genus. Bell (MS) noted that the larva
lacked prolegs on both A3 and A4 and is thus atypical within the Indo-Australian
fauna. It does, however, feed on Phyllanthus.
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