Artaxa perplexa Swinhoe comb. n.

Euproctis perplexa Swinhoe, 1903, Trans. ent. Soc. London, 1903: 422.

Euproctis icelomorpha Swinhoe, 1906, Ann. Mag. nat. Hist. (7), 17: 541.

Euproctis nubilosa van eecke, 1928, Zool. Meded. Leiden, 11:121

Euproctis schistocarpa Collenette, 1949, Ann. Mag. nat. Hist. (12), 1: 723, syn. n.

Diagnosis

This species and typical erema from Peninsular Malaysia have similar facies, with a bipunctate forewing apex and a darker forewing medial band, interrupted along the veins and edged with paler ground colour amid an extensive zone of brown shading.

This species has the anterior apical spot larger than the posterior rather than vice versa (in both species the weaker spot can become obsolete), and the medial band is narrower, more intense towards the dorsum, and with a broader pale break subdorsally.

In the female genitalia, the sclerotised portion of the ductus is short, broad, with a complex ostium.

Males of this species have often been taken (e.g. by Toxopeus (1948) and in the BMNH collection) to be those of (See Micromorphe linta Moore) as they have very similar facies to the female of linta. However, the forewing venation lacks the diagnostic features of Micromorphe, thus nubilosa has vein R5 present in the forewing, and the male abdomen has tymbals.

The genitalia have the typical processes flanking the uncus, but the valves are deep, rectangular, with a rather falcate dorsal angle.

The saccus is long.

The aedeagus vesica is globular, with a large, hooked cornutus.

Taxonomic notes

Van Eecke (1928) illustrated Micromorphe chalcostoma Collenette as M. linta, and described a mixed series of nubilosa males and linta females as nubilosa. Schintlmeister (1994) appears to have been confused by this, illustrating the genitalia of nubilosa as those of linta in his fig 98 and illustrating a nubilosa male and linta female as chalcostoma in his colour plate.
A related species, A. rubiginosa Snellen **comb. n.*, * occurs in Java. It has weaker, slightly redder forewing shading, faint pale fasciae, and the submarginal black spot is in a more posterior position, at one third from the apex. The male genitalia (Fig 126) have similar valves, but the tegumen processes and saccus are more robust, and the aedeagus has a smaller vesica with two cornuti.
E. van Nieukerken (pers. comm.), as part of a project conducting DNA (COI) barcoding of freshly collected Lymantriidae from Kalimantan, has noted that Artaxa nubilosa van Eecke, known only from males (the females associated with the name by van Eecke were those of Micromorphe linta Moore, as indicated on p. 66 of Part 5), is identical to Arna perplexa Swinhoe, known only from females. This ‘marriage’ was not obvious, considering the very different forewing patterns of the sexes, but clearly the two taxa must be brought into synonymy, syn. n., with perplexa having priority.