Ophiusini

This tribe is weakly defined on possession of rather geometric forewing patterning combined with a plain hindwing or one with varying degrees of flash coloration, usually a pale medial band on a dark ground. The male genitalia have the uncus variably complex, often with a dorsal peak, spine or other process, and opposed by a strong scaphium. The tegumen often bears lateral processes. The valves tend to be rather tongue-like or rounded distally, without ornamentation, this being restricted to a zone adjacent to the vinculum, where processes from the costa to the sacculus arise from an arch of sclerotisation across the base. The most dorsal of these processes has been suggested by Fibiger (2003) to be the detached costa. Bilateral asymmetry is frequent in all these features. The juxta, aedeagus and vesica are typical of the core catocalines. The females usually have a distinct antevaginal plate from the seventh sternite that covers the ostium, but this can be divided, highly complex and hard to interpret. The ductus bursae varies in length but can be long, sclerotised, rather ribbon-like, and folded in a Z-like manner within the abdomen (usually mounted unfolded in slide preparations).

It may be possible to subdivide the tribe further, though the first two sections show most of the features listed above. The first three genera treated, Artena Walker, Thyas Hübner and Ophiusa Ochsenheimer share features of both adults and larvae as discussed under Artena, and the pupa may have secondarily lost the bloom found widely in the rest of the tribe.

The second section consists mainly of the Achaea/Parallelia complex discussed by Holloway & Miller (2003) and on pp 53 and 57. Of the features shared by the group, coremata on the valves of the male genitalia are the most conspicuous. The genera from Ophisma Guenée to Chalciope Hübner belong to this section, and possibly also Oxyodes Guenée.

The final section consists of the genera Trigonodes Guenée and Mocis Hübner with much simpler male genitalia with processes on the valves reduced to one somewhat distally situated saccular process and sometimes a central, subapical one, not a detached costa. Chalciope Hübner has facies features and open habitat biology suggesting a relationship to the third section, but the male genitalia have coremata and valve processes as in the second section, and the structure of the male eighth sternite also indicates this. Rectipalpula Joannis is retained provisionally in the group through its association with Oxyodes.

Host plant records for the three sections are also distinct, with the first favouring Combretaceae and Myrtaceae, the second with genera specialist on Euphorbiaceae, and the third with most records on Gramineae and Leguminosae.

Berio (1959) split the first section between his phyla of Anua and Dermaleipa, but the second corresponds to his phylum of Achaea and the third to his phylum of Mocis. Fibiger (2003) recognised the first two sections as genus-groups and added two further genera from the European fauna to the first. Family-group names are available for all three sections, with Ophiusini (= Anuini, Lagopterini and Dermaleipini) falling within the first, Dysgoniini (= Achaeini) for the second and Remigiini (= Mocisini) for the third.