Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Cryptophasa tetrazona


Cryptophasa tetrazona (Lower, 1901)


BOLD

BOLD


Xylorycta tetrazona Lower, 1901, Descriptions of new genera and species of Australian Lepidoptera. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 25: 63-98 [84]. Holotype whereabouts unknown ♀, Stawell, Vic.
Xylorycta tetrazona Lower, 1901. Lower, 1902: Descriptions of new genera and species of Australian Lepidoptera. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 26: 212-247 [238].
Xylorycta tetrazona Low. Lower, 1917, The Lepidoptera of Broken Hill, New South Wales. Part III. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 41, 369-477.
Cryptophasa tetrazona (Lower). Common, in Nielsen, Edwards, & Rangsi, 1996, Checklist of the Lepidoptera of Australia. Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera, 4: i-xiv, 1-529 & CD-ROM [87].
Xylorycta tetrazona Lower, 1901. cf insana Felder. Beccaloni, G. W., Scoble, M. J., Robinson, G. S. & Pitkin, B. (Editors). 2003. The Global Lepidoptera Names Index (LepIndex). World Wide Web electronic publication. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/entomology/lepindex [accessed 21 April 2010].
Cryptophasa tetrazona (Lower). Edwards, E. D. (2003), Xyloryctinae. Australian Faunal Directory. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra. http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/online-resources/fauna/afd/taxa/XYLORYCTINAE [accessed 18 June 2010].

Original description, Lower 1901
Xylorycta tetrazona. n. sp.
Female, 30 mm. Head and palpi orange-yellow. Antennae fuscous, basal joint yellow. Thorax white with a moderately broad anterior fuscous band, and a fuscous posterior spot. Legs and abdomen orange-yellow. Forewings elongate, moderate, costa gently arched, termen gently rounded, oblique; 2 from three-fourths; white, markings fuscous; a narrow streak along costa from base to before third fascia; four moderately broad nearly equidistant fasciae, first near base, narrowest in middle; second, somewhat curved inwardly from middle of costa, to inner margin; third from costa at five-sixths to just before anal angle; nearly straight; fourth along termen; between the third and fourth are 2 fuscous spots on costa; an irregular suffused streak on inner margin between second and third fasciae; cilia whitish (imperfect). Hindwings with termen rounded, sinuate beneath apex, apex faintly produced; orange-yellow, becoming broadly fuscous from apex to beyond middle of termen, finely attenuated posteriorly; cilia orange-yellow.
Apparently nearly allied to ophiogramma, Meyr., but immediately separated by the extra fascia (in the former species there are but three), and the yellow hindwings.
Stawell, Victoria; one specimen taken in November.

Other references

Xylorycta tetrazona, Lower.
(Trans. Roy. Soc., S.A., p. 84, 1901.)
I have received a specimen of this species from Messrs, S. and F. Angel, taken at Norwood, South Australia. in which the ground color of forewings is yellow. In the type, which came from Stawell. Victoria, they are white. (Lower, 1902).

Xylorycta tetrazona, Low.
One specimen, in November. The type came from Stawell, Victoria. I have it also from Norwood and Oodnadatta, S. Austr. (Lower, 1917).

Diagnosis:
Description:
Head:
Thorax:
Abdomen:
Cryptophasa tetrazona, ♂ genitalia. Stanthorpe, QLD, 3 November 1934. ANIC slide no. G262, dissected by I.F.B. Common, 1959.

Food plants:
Flight period:
Distribution: New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia. Endemic. (Edwards, 2003).

Remarks:
Despite the pectinated antennae, the male genitalia would suggest a more suitable placement might be found in Xylorycta.



Quite possibly identical to Cryptophasa insana (R. Felder & Rogenhofer, 1875). However, Ted Edwards does not think so (email communication, 20 April 2009):

“The specimen of Cryptophasa insana illustrated on AMO closely matches the type specimen of which there is a photograph in the ANIC. Felder's illustration is rather simplified but is an acceptable likeness.

The type of Cryptophasa tetrazona Lower has not been found. It came from Stawell, Vic.  Lower's description gives the ground colour as white with fuscous markings. This is a reasonable description of C. tetrazona as illustrated on the BOLD website from a specimen in the ANIC.

C. insana and C. tetrazona seem to be two distinct species as their distributions must come near to each other in southern SA.  We have specimens of C. tetrazona from Jeparit in Victoria not too far from Stawell to southern Qld and specimens of C. insana from Adelaide (the probable origin of Felder's specimen) and from SE WA.

In view of this I think both AMO and BOLD are correct.”