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Pseudodirades Janse
Type species: lactea Warren, Southern Africa.
This and the next genus contain species with pale bone-coloured ground
colour to the wings, marked with dark brown. Both have the usual two tails on
the hindwing, but this lacks vein M2. The forewing has the medial zone darker
brown, with the antemedial boundary strongly angled such that the band is
constricted centrally. There is also an irregular marginal zone of dark brown.
The hindwings also have both fasciae evident, angled in a typically epiplemine
manner. The male antennae are uniserrate, lamellate, often densely scaled.
In the male genitalia the uncus is short, not strongly distinguished
from the tegumen, triangular-cruciform in the type species. The gnathus is
usually absent. The juxta has a diagnostic pair of processes dorsally,
well-developed in the type species. The valves are ovate, with weak hair-pencils
scrolled into the base of the sacculus, and two small, blunt spines near the
centre of the somewhat sclerotised ventral margin: these are not seen in the
next genus.
In the female the ductus is long, broad, sclerotised, the bursa pyriform,
with a pair of signa adjacent to each other centrally, with numerous short
spines directed laterally away from their point of contact.
Both genera appear to be more diverse in Africa, though their precise
limits have yet to be established. The Sri Lankan species P. polei Hampson
comb. n. should probably be assigned here, having setose lobes on the
juxta, and similar hair-pencils at the base of the sacculus, but a divided
gnathus is also present. The taxon yoshimotoi Holloway from New Caledonia
is of the same facies type as this and the next genus, but is only known from
females. They lack the ostial structures of the next genus, but males are needed
to clarify its placement.
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