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Subgenus Leucania
Ochsenheimer
Type
species: comma Linnaeus (Europe)
Synonyms: Donachlora
Sodoffsky and Pudorina Gistl (unnecessary replacement names); Neoborolia
Matsumura (type species nohirae Matsumura = insecuta Walker,
Japan); Xipholeucania Sugi (type species roseilinea Walker).
This group has the
cucullus features of Acantholeucania combined with complete absence of
the trifine hair pencil; in the type species and other Palaearctic relatives it
is replaced by a corema (Birch, 1972). The harpe is usually small, its ventral
sclerotised foundation with its exterior margin acute, or doubly acute,
associated with the subcostal process, giving a bidentate or tridentate effect.
All Bornean taxa
except M. irregularis Walker fall into a section of the subgenus where
there is a narrow setose flap overlapping the base of the cucullus from the
sacculus.
The Bornean M.
venalba Moore and M. roseilinea Walker fall into this section, as
does a group of Indo-Australian taxa with even more striking modification.
In the last group
the cucullus is reduced to a narrow rod, though still overlapped at the base by
the setose flap. The sacculus is very much enlarged, and the process from the
exterior margin of the ventral sclerotisation of the harpe is enlarged into a
massive spatulate process. On the eighth sternite there is a pair of lateral
hair pencils rather than a transverse band of hairs. The aedeagus vesica is
short, with a longitudinal band of small spines, and the appendix bursae is
similarly short.
The group falls
within Sugi's original concept of Xipholeucania but this author was
thwarted by an earlier misidentification of the type species he cited (Holloway,
1979: 401). There are a few reddish Australasian species discussed by Holloway,
and a number of Oriental ones with striate grey forewings. M. simillima Walker
and M. nabalua Holloway are discussed below. In addition there is M.
celebensis Tams (Sulawesi, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra (slide 13933) and
?Java), M. megaproctis Hampson (Sri Lanka) and an undescribed species
from Sulawesi (slide 13923).
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