Mixochlora vittata Moore

Geometra vittata Moore, 1867, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. 1867: 636.

Tanaorhinus prasinus Butler, 1879, Ann. Mag. nat. Hist. (5), 4 :438.

Tanaorhinus vittata sumatrensis Prout, 1933, Gross-Schmett. Erde 12: 77.

Mixochlora vittata kalisi Prout, 1935, Novit. zool. 39: 224.

Mixochlora vittata Moore; Holloway, 1976: 61.

Diagnosis

This and the next species are very similar but M. argentifusa Walker has the antemedial and postmedial more strongly convergent towards the dorsum, and the silvery submarginal of the forewing is irregular in vittata but forms an obtuse angle in argentifusa.

Geographical range

Himalaya, China; Japan (ssp. prasinus(); Sumatra, Borneo (ssp. sumatrensis); Java (ssp. kalisi).

Habitat preference

On G. Mulu two specimens were taken at 1000m. On G. Kinabalu the species was found infrequently from 1500m to 1930m.

Biology

The larva of vittata in India was described by Singh (1953).The body is always cylindrical, sparsely granulate, a dirty white, with oblique triangular dorsal green stripes from A3 to A8 (see also Barlow (1982)).

The larva feeds on young leaves. Pupation is within a light cocoon in a curled leaf. Sevastopulo (1947b) described the pupa: it is ivory white, the abdomen streaked finely with pink and sparsely speckled black along with the thorax.

The host in India is Quercus (Fagaceae), but the Japanese subspecies has also been reared from Fagus in the same family and Corylus (Corylaceae) (Nakajima & Sato, 1979).

Genitalia: