Acropteris ciniferaria Walker

Micronia ciniferaria Walker, 1866, List Specimens lepid. Insects Colln Br. Mus., 35: 1642

Micronia obliquaria Moore, 1877, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond., 1877: 622.

Acropteris ciniferaria Walker; Holloway, 1976: 86.

Diagnosis

The white ground colour is more cream-tinged than in congeners, the markings pale brown rather than grey, speckly, rather than linear, such that the fasciae, though oblique on the forewing, are more diffuse and obscure. The hindwing angle is marked with a black fleck, with other, smaller flecks on either side.

Geographical Range

Oriental tropics to Sulawesi and Lesser Sundas.

Habitat Preference

Most old material is from lowland localities (e.g. Pulo Laut), but one specimen was taken at 1050m at Kundasan near G. Kinabalu.

Biology

Bell (MS) described the larva in S. India. It is somewhat fusiform in shape, the roundish head narrower than T1. The skin is polished, glossy, the setae on tubercles. Each segment has a transverse, linear depression. The colour is a light, translucent green with a dark dorsal line. The pupa is claviform with only a pair of hooked shafts on the cremaster.

The larvae live on the underside of leaves or, when larger, between two leaves. Pupation is on the upper surfaces of a leaf with the edges drawn slightly together, the leaf surface is webbed with shining silk. The pupa lies along the midrib, attached by the cremaster and a ‘body-band more or less’.

The host-plant was given as Marsdenia (Asclepiadaceae), but corrected to Dregia in the same family by Lees & Smith (1991).

Genitalia: