Trigonodes cephise Cramer
Noctua cephise Cramer, [1779] 1782, Uitlandsche Kapellen, 3: 59.
Trigonodes maxima Guenée, 1852, Hist. Nat. Insectes, Spec. gén. Lépid. 7: 282.
Chalciope cephise ab. cephisoides Strand, 1917, Arch. Naturgesch
Diagnosis
See the previous species. There is some sexual dimorphism. Females have the distal black triangle broken into a subcostal streak and a submarginal band with a curved inner border; the oblique pale bar dividing the two black triangles in the male is thus expanded into a triangular area in the female.
Taxonomic note
The taxon cephisiodes Gaede ex Strand (not noted as promoted from infrasubspecific level by Nielsen et al. (1996)) has yellower ground colour and much reduced brown banding on the hindwing. The male genitalia have bilaterally symmetric processes from the juxta and on the valves; these are asymmetric in cephise. The few specimens seen are from Thailand and Burma. If these differences in the genitalia prove constant, then cephisiodes is probably a distinct species. The taxon saina Swinhoe was included as a good species in ChalciopeHübner by Poole (1989), but is merely a subspecies (see below) of cephise, having identical male genitalia.
Geographical range
Indo-Australian tropics to N. Australia, the Caroline Is., Samoa and New Caledonia, with the darker ssp. sainaon Nias and other islands on the south west of Sumatra.
Habitat preference
There are two old specimens labelled ‘Borneo’ from the F. Moore collection, and two more from Tenom and G. Kinabalu in Sabah but without more precise data. The species has not been taken in recent surveys.
Biology
The larva in Samoa was illustrated by Comstock (1966). It is typically ophiusine, an elongate semi-looper with only the prolegs on A5 and A6 functional.
The ground colour is a creamy tan, striped and streaked longitudinally with darker brown, the only really unbroken stripe being a double dorsal red-brown one.
The pupa has a bluish white powdery bloom.
The host plant recorded was Vigna (Leguminosae).
Genitalia:
