Trabala viridana Joicey & Talbot

Trabala viridana Joicey & Talbot, 1917, Ann. Mag. nat. Hist. (8), 20: 8.

Trabala indra Roepke, 1951: 123, syn. n.

Trabala indra Roepke; Holloway, 1982: 200; Barlow, 1982: 52.

Image of [object Object] Joicey & Talbot ♂ — ♂

Diagnosis

This is similar to krishna in the male but the is darker, duller, the discal spot is weak and the fasciae are thinner, more crenulate, brownish rather than yellow, the forewing postmedial diagnostically curved; the submarginal spots are chevrons rather than arrow-heads; the fringes are crenulate with a strong violet tinge.

The male genitalia have a pair of small toothed processes on the tegumen.

The female is a dark dull green with strongly crenulate fasciae, sometimes invested with paler colour, and a large brown blotch on the forewing dorsum extending beyond both fasciae.

Taxonomic Notes

Holloway (1982) identified this species as indra, a species described by Roepke from faded females from Sumatra and Borneo; this identification was based on females in the BMNH from Borneo and Sumatra referred to by Roepke.

The males match the type of viridana Joicey & Talbot (New Guinea) in external features and in genitalia.

It is probable that this specimen has been mislabelled and that viridana is a senior synonym of indra. The localisation of most Trabala species and the endemism in the Philippines and Sulawesi indicates that the occurrence of the same species in Borneo and New Guinea is extremely improbable.

The Sumatran taxon T. bhatara Roepke (1955, Z. Lepid. 3: 148-149) was not mentioned in Part 3 or by Holloway & Bender (1990). However, a note against the name in the BMNH collection suggests that it had been checked by JDH at some stage, and that it is probably a synonym of T. viridana; Roepke drew attention in his description of bhatara to the marked similarity to viridana in facies and male genitalia. Roepke had also described Sumatran females of viridana as indra Roepke as discussed in Part 3.