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Susica Walker
Type species: pallida Walker.
Synonym: Tadema Walker (type species: sinensis Walker).
This genus was reviewed by Holloway (1982a, b), the second
reference including a cladistic analysis of the subgroup to which the three
Bornean species belong and to which the name Tadema applies but which
excludes the type species pallida and allies.
The relationship between the two subgroups and genera such as the Papuan
Hydroclada Meyrick and the African Tryphax Karsch still needs to
be resolved. Hydroclada has females with a bisignate bursa and spiralled
ductus but this is not evident in typical Susica, which has four
apophyses to segment 8; all females of the Tadema subgroup have two
apophyses as normal and lack a spiral or a signum except S. sinensis where
there is a signum with two irregular and weak rows of spines that could have
been derived from the bisignate condition.
The species have rather coarsely scaled, dark speckled fawn forewings, a
submarginal roughly parallel to the margin and usually an oblique fascia running from near the submarginal on the
costa to subbasally on the
dorsum. The subgroup containing the Bornean species has a characteristic
irregular subapical angle in the submarginal. This subgroup is subdivided into
three on the basis mainly of genitalia characters as set out in the references
cited, two sister pairs and one triplet, each of which is represented in Borneo.
The larvae of the subgroup containing the Bornean species are parallel-
sided, deep, with the anterior and posterior two or three dorsolaterals larger
than the intervening ones much as in many genera of the 'bisignate' group.
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