Penicillaria maculata Butler

Penicillaria maculata Butler, 1889, Illustr. typical Specimens Lepid. Colln Br. Mus . 7 :12, 71.

Bombotelia maculata Butler; Gaede, 1937.

Diagnosis

See Penicillaria dorsipuncta Hampson . The male genitalia were illustrated by Holloway (1979).

Geographical Range

The species is found throughout the Indo-Australian tropics, with a distinct subspecies, richardsoni Holloway, in Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

Habitat Preference

Only five specimens have been taken in recent light-trap surveys. Two were from lowland dipterocarp forest and three were from upper montane forest (Bukit Pagon and Bukit Retak in Brunei and G. Mulu in Sarawak). The high altitude specimens were slightly larger and more strikingly marked than the lowland ones.

Biology

Semper (1896-1902) ostensibly described the larva of maculata but Hampson (1912, Cat. Lepid. Phalaenae Br. Mus. 11: 13) indicated that this was a misidentification of dorsipuncta. The larva was illustrated as roughly spindle-shaped (not so extreme as in jocosatrix), bright green with yellow and black spots, the yellow ones laterally on each proleg-bearing abdominal segment being larger than the rest. The host was Semecarpus (Anacardiaceae).