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Lophothripa
vitea
Swinhoe
Selepa vitea Swinhoe, 1885, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond., 1885: 460.
Heteronota
ochthias
Meyrick, 1902, Trans. ent. Soc. London, 35: 48.
Lophothripa vitea ab.
viteana
Strand, 1917, Arch. Naturgesch., 82 (A1): 82.
Lophothripa vitea
viteana
Gaede, 1937, Gross-Schmett. Erde, 11: 390.
Diagnosis. The wings are shades of grey and black, the forewings with the
basal half usually blackish with paler patches and containing ridges of raised
scales. The postmedial is a double black line, irregular in course, most
strongly developed in the discal area.
Geographical range. Indo-Australian tropics to Queensland and the Solomons.
Habitat preference. The only Bornean specimens seen are from Kretam on the
coast of Sabah and from lowland dipterocarp forest at Barito Ulu in the centre
of Kalimantan. The host-plants suggest it may be commoner in coastal habitats,
though specimens from throughout the range have also been taken at altitudes up
to 1000m.
Biology. The species was reared in India by Bell (MS). The larva is
typically chloephorine, cylindrical with all prolegs. The head is round, hardly
bilobed, slightly more soiled green in colour than the body. The body is dull,
smooth, the segments well defined, with primary setae only, The colour is a
clear grass green.
Pupation is in a semiovoid cocoon, usually on the underside of leaf, truncated
anteriorly where it rises to a dorsal peak that overhangs the truncation, and
produced posteriorly into two narrowly separated tails of silk on the leaf
surface as in Dilophothripa. In the middle of the dorsum there is
usually a slight tubercle of silk. The pupa is slender, cylindrically
spindle-shaped. The front margin of segment A8 is raised and beaded and there is
no cremaster. There is no information on sound production in the cocoon.
The larva feeds on young leaves, resting stretched out on the undersides.
The host-plants recorded were Terminalia (Combretaceae) and
Lagerstroemia (Lythraceae). Other known larval host-plants (Kuroko &
Lewvanich, 1993; unpublished IIE records) are: Sonneratia (Sonneratiaceae);
Heritiera (Sterculiaceae).
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