Amphigonia hepatizans Guenée
Amphigonia hepatizans Guenée, 1852, Hist. Nat. Insectes, Spec. gén. Lépid. 7: 338.
Amphigonia hepatizans Guenée; Holloway, 1976: 39.
Diagnosis
♂♂ 7mm. This is the smallest of the three white species in Borneo, with a neat, rather squared postmedial and a distinctive broad antemedial bar that is generally shaded blackish. The hindwings are pale grey. The male antennae are ciliate. The genitalia have the valves narrow, tapering, the costal thickening running to the end where it is acute. The saccular process is also prominent, digitate. The aedeagus vesica has a very coarsely scobinate lobe. The Himalayan A. mesozonata Hampson has similar genitalia but the valve apex is more produced, the saccular process smaller and much more slender, and the scobinate lobe of the aedeagus is less well defined with a lot of the scobination finer; the moth itself is slightly larger, with the outermost line of the antemedial converging with the innermost one of the postmedial, rather than staying well separate.
Diagnosis
The two species have facies as in the generic account, but differ in size, hepatizans being distinctly larger, and wing shape, with hepatizans having the margins much less dentate. The forewing margin in hepatizans is more acutely and distinctly angled centrally, with the portion anterior to the angle more concave than that posterior to it; the reverse is the case in motisigna Prout.
Geographical range
Indian Subregion, Thailand (VK), Andamans, Sundaland, Sumbawa, Sulawesi; there is a closely related species in New Guinea (kobesi Zilli & Hogenes, 2004).
Habitat preference
Three out of the four specimens taken in recent surveys are from montane localities: 1500m and 1920m on G. Kinabalu; 1618m on Bukit Retak in Brunei. The fourth specimen was taken from lowland forest at 300m in the Ulu Temburong of Brunei. Chey (1994) recorded the species as frequent in secondary forest in the lowlands of Sabah.
Biology
Bell (MS) described the larva, originally thought to be Lacera alope, as dark, russet-brown, with black-rimmed, light orange spiracles. The head is chocolate brown and yellow. The prolegs of A3 are very small, those of A4 much larger. The setae arise from yellow dots. There are prominent, red and black tubercles on A8. The description of the pupa does not mention a powdery bloom.
Bell did not mention a host plant, but it is probably in the Leguminosae like Lacera alope. Wagatea (now Moullava) of this family is pencilled on the margin of Bell’s typescript.
Genitalia:
