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Amblychia Guenée
Type species: angeronaria Guenée.
Synonym: Elphos Guenée (type species hymenaria
Guenée, India) syn. n.
The synonymy above unites two groups of very large species on the basis
of apomorphies in the male and female genitalia. Amblychia species are
relatively uniform grey-brown with a mixture of straight and crenulate fasciae
and a strongly angular and excavated margin to the hindwing. Elphos species
have more speckled greyish facies and all fasciae are distinctly crenulate.
The male antennae are bipectinate to three-quarters, and the forewing
has a fovea and the third sternite has a setal comb.
The male genitalia have the uncus usually bifid and the gnathus strong,
apically rugose. The valves are rhomboidal, the angles rounded. The costa is
short, sometimes rather swollen, bearing long hair-setae. The more robust
cucullar setation extends diagnostically to the centre of the valve, round the
distal edge of a central depression, to terminate in a lobe just interior to the
ventral angle of the rhomboid. This lobe is more densely invested with short,
spinelike setae. The aedeagus usually has a small lateral thorn subapically.
In the female genitalia the ovipositor lobes are diagnostically strongly
sclerotised, curved, tapering to an acute apex. The densely scaled, membraneous
pair of lobes on the lamella postvaginalis is also definitive. The ductus is
short, sclerotised, rather funnel-like. The bursa expands gradually from the
ductus to a pyriform distal bulb. When a signum is present, this is distal,
marginally weakly dentate.
Larvae of the type species and A. insuetum Butler are illustrated
in Sugi (1987). They are robust, blackish or mottled ochre and brown, twig-like,
with prominent spiracles and scattered with small white dots and tubercles
bearing the setae.
Most host records (Sugi; Sato & Nakajima, 1975) are from
Lauraceae (e.g. Lindera, Benzoin, Parabenzoin) but there is a record from
Illicium (Illiciaceae).
The genus is most diverse in the Oriental tropics, but extends further
east with a single species known from New Caledonia (Holloway, 1979).
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