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Tamba
sidonalis Walker
Zethes
sidonalis Swinhoe, 1917, Ann. Mag. nat. Hist. (8),
20: 162.
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Tamba
sidonalis 
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Diagnosis.
The wings are a pale brownish grey with a darker marginal zone and, on the male
forewing, a series of darker, rather crenulate fasciae basal to the postmedidal;
these are faint in the female. The band immediately distal to the postmedial is
palest, and the submarginals distal to this are more evident at the dorsal end,
especially on the hindwing. The female from the Barito Ulu (see below) has the
postmedials and the forewing antemedial finely black, and CuA in the cell, M3
and CuA1 on the forewing are also finely lined with black.
Taxonomic
note. The species is related to T. decolor Walker
(Sri Lanka) which has a similar general facies but slight differences in the
male genitalia. These are more elongate in sidonalis,
though decolor
has
an extra triangular process at the costal side of the distal series of processes
on the valve.
Geographical
range. Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo, Thailand (VK).
Habitat
preference. The three specimens seen are from Samarinda and upstream from
Pontianak in the lowlands of Kalimantan, and one taken more recently from
lowland forest at 60m in the Ulu Belait area of Brunei.
Biology.
The long, cylindrical larva of the related decolor Walker
was reared by Bell (MS) from Aporusa (Euphorbiaceae) in India. Prolegs on A3 are missing,
and those on A4 are vestigial. The head is light yellow with an orange
semicircle on the vertex and tinged green or brown elsewhere; the setae are long
and dark. The body is very light green with irregularly wavy dorsal, subdorsal,
dorsolateral, supra- and subspiracular bands of blackish suffusion with white
edging, the blackish suffusion intensifying to the rear of each segment. The
spiracles are black. Pupation is on the ground in a white silken cell covered
with soil particles.
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