Callidrepana argenteola Moore

Drepana argenteola Moore, 1858, Cat. lepid. Insects Mus. Hon. E. India Co., 2: 369.

Drepana bracteata Hampson, 1893, *Illustr. typical Specimens lepid. Insects. Colln. Br. Mus., 9: 68.

Callidrepana dialitha West, 1932, Novit. zool., 37: 228.

Callidrepana bracteata celebensis Warren, 1922, Gross-Schmett. 10: 471, syn. n.

Callidrepana argenteola Moore; Holloway, 1976: 93.

Diagnosis

The pale ochreous brown wings of argenteola are distinguished by a very narrow discal brown streak on the forewing with fainter antemedial and postmedial bars flanking it in parallel: the veins posterior to these bars are picked out slightly paler.

The postmedials are double and the forewings strongly falcate in both sexes.

The female is larger than the male but similarly patterned.

Taxonomic Notes

All the taxa with synonymy above share strong, black sclerotisation of the valve processes and those of the eighth segment.

The aedeagus is expanded into a black ring subapically.

However, there is marked variation in the form of these structures throughout the range.

The nominal subspecies occurs in Sundaland.

Geographical range

Oriental tropics to Taiwan, the Philippines (ssp. dialitha), Sulawesi (ssp. celebensis) and Timor.

Habitat preference

Most records are from lowland forest, but single specimens were taken at 1200m and 1760m on G. Kinabalu.

Biology

Bell (MS) reared the species in India.

The larva resembles a bird-dropping.

It is anteriorly truncated, a fusiform shape, the suranal process short, triangular, acute.

The head is bilobed.

The skin has an oily gloss, and the setae are on tubercles on each segment that form part of a transverse tumidity.

The colour is greenish black, streaked indistinctly with grey.

A1 is dorsally black, and brownish yellow dorsolaterally.

Most dorsal tubercles are yellow-brown.

White patches laterally on A7 extend up dorsally and, as a yellow band, to the anterior of A6 where there is a small, elongate, subdorsal orange red spot on each side.

There are a few light yellow markings elsewhere.

The larvae are found on the upperside of leaves, stretched along the midrib, but curling round tightly on themselves when alarmed.

Pupation is in a slight cradle at the edge of a leaf, pulled together with silk.

The host-plant recorded by Bell was Mangifera (Anacardiaceae).