Spodoptera pecten Guenée

Spodoptera pecten Guenee, 1852, Spec. Gen. Lep. Hist nat. Insectes, 5:155.

Spodoptera pecten Guenee; Holloway, 1976: 12.

Diagnosis

The male resembles a rather short-winged, brown S. mauritia; the antennae are diagnostically bipectinate. The hindwings of both sexes lack the dark delineation of the veins seen in mauritia. The membranous zone of the female genitalia is highly developed.

Geographical range

Indo-Australian tropics to New Guinea.

Habitat preference

The species is abundant in open, cultivated or disturbed habitats in the lowlands.

Biology

The life history was described by Sevastopulo (1941b). The egg is pale bluish green, spherical, with numerous ribs from micropyle to base. Eggs are laid in batches, often of two or three layers, covered with scales from the female abdomen.

The fully grown larva is very similar to that of S. mauritia but smaller. It is brownish or greenish grey with paler dorsal and subdorsal stripes, the latter edged above with black lunules. There is a pale spiracular stripe edged above by purple.

Pupation is in the soil in a slight earthen cocoon.

The host-plants are mostly grasses but there is a record in the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia of the larva feeding on the seeds of Shorea curtisii (Dipterocarpaceae).

Genitalia: