|
Penicillaria maculata
Butler
Penicillaria
maculata
Butler, 1889, Illustr. typical Specimens Lepid. Colln Br. Mus. 7:12, 71.
Bombotelia
maculata
Butler; Gaede, 1937.
|
Penicillaria maculata
|
Diagnosis. See Penicillaria dorsipuncta Hampson. The male genitalia were illustrated by Holloway
(1979).
Geographical range. The species is found throughout the Indo-Australian
tropics, with a distinct subspecies, richardsoni Holloway, in Vanuatu and
New Caledonia.
Habitat preference. Only five specimens have been taken in recent light-trap surveys. Two were from lowland dipterocarp forest and three were from upper
montane forest (Bukit Pagon and Bukit Retak in Brunei and G. Mulu in Sarawak).
The high altitude specimens were slightly larger and more strikingly marked than
the lowland ones.
Biology. Semper (1896-1902) ostensibly described the larva of maculata but
Hampson (1912, Cat. Lepid. Phalaenae Br. Mus. 11: 13) indicated that this
was a misidentification of dorsipuncta. The larva was illustrated as
roughly spindle-shaped (not so extreme as in jocosatrix), bright green
with yellow and black spots, the yellow ones laterally on each proleg-bearing
abdominal segment being larger than the rest. The host was Semecarpus (Anacardiaceae).
<<Back
>>Forward <<Return
to Contents page
|
