Phacusa crawfurdi Wallengren

Syntomis crawfurdi Moore, 1859, Cat. Lepid. Insects Mus. E. Ind. House., 2: 327.

Diagnosis and taxonomic note

This species has facies typical of the genus, as illustrated. It can best be distinguished by characteristics of the aedeagus vesica of the male genitalia as indicated above. It was treated as conspecific with the type species by Jordan (1907), and the structure of the valve is similar. However, the aedeagus vesica has the pair of cornuti very large, both apically acute and of similar robustness to the more distal one of tenebrosa, but both are larger. The more basal one is evenly curved, but the more distal one is strongly flexed basally but more or less straight over the distal half and it is slightly larger. The third cornutus is absent in a Javan male but present, though small (a quarter of the size of the distal member of the pair) in material from the rest of Sundaland. The distal member of the pair in crawfurdi is also smaller in typical crawfurdi, closer in size to the more distal member of the pair in tenebrosa.

Geographical range

Java; Borneo, Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia.

Habitat preference

Three specimens from Borneo have been seen. The more precise data on two of them indicate only ‘Kuching’, a lowland locality with extensive human disturbance.

Biology.

Piepers & Snellen (1902 [1903]) described the larva of crawfurdi. It is black with four rows of brown verrucae, each bearing a tuft of milky white hairs. The host plant was not identified. H.S. Barlow (pers. comm.) reared out what was probably crawfurdi from a similar larva in Peninsular Malaysia. The host plant was Leea (Leeaceae; allied to Vitaceae).

Genitalia: