Hemiceratoides thisbe Zilli & Balbut & Dolwald & Lees 2024
Creators: name: Zilli, Albelto
name: Balbut, Jélôme
name: Dolwald, Leejiah J.
name: Lees, David C.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Erebidae
Hemiceratoides
Hemiceratoides thisbe

description: Hemiceratoides thisbe (Fawcett, 1918) comb. nov.
(Fig. 8G–J)
Cynisca thisbe Fawcett, 1918. Proceedings of the General Meetings for Scientific Business of the Zoological Society of London 1917 (3/4): 240, pl. 1, fig. 13. Type locality: (Kenya) British East Africa … Kedai. Type material: ♀ holotypus, by monotypy, in NHMUK (examined). Gaede (1940 in 1939–40) stated he knew this species only on the basis of two males from East Africa, while the only specimen mentioned by Fawcett (1918) was actually the female holotype.
Diagnosis: Easily distinguishable from all other species of Hemiceratoides by the ground colour of the hindwing, white instead of yellow-orange. Other obvious differences are found in the forewing, less slender, with blurred pattern where only reniform stigma is barely appreciable and not in all individuals, more scalloped anal margin because of stronger median lobe and tornal angle, and distinctly crenulated termen. Patagium and tegulae are comparatively less developed, the latter appearing concolorous due to the generally pale overall colouring, which is still longitudinally bisected between darker dorsal and paler lateral areas. The labial palpi look more slender because of slightly shorter scale vestiture, so that the outline of the third palpomere is more appreciable. The male antenna has relatively long pectinations up to the middle of flagellum. The male genitalia are remarkably similar to those of H. avimolestum and H. ornithopotis, and differ from these in numerous details, but most conspicuously in the folding fan-shaped saccular lobe of left valva. The valva terminates into a broad expansion that fully incorporates the base of the distal process of saccular origin, so that no distinct anal angle is present, the process being thinner and shorter than in H. ornithopotis. The uncus is as thin as in H. avimolestum, while the long, whip-like mastigojuxta is spined on the inner side slightly before its middle (Fig. 9F). In the phallus, the pointed coecum has a recurved tip and is almost perpendicular to the longitudinal axis, gaining a boot-shaped silhouette to this extremity, while on the distal end an auricolate carina is present; the vesica has a main U-shaped corpus with a tubular diverticulum from it and other smaller diverticula and bulges as in Fig. 10F. In the female genitalia there is a very wide, roughly rhomboid ventral plate overlapping the ostium bursae and to its right a narrow, scale-like plate (Fig. 11E).
Distribution: Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya).
Molecular resources: None. Remarks: Little is known about this species, which has been collected in semi-deserts and dry savannah areas in the southernmost Southern Region of Ethiopia and southern parts of the Eastern and Coast Regions of Kenya.
description: Published as part of Zilli, Albelto, Balbut, Jélôme, Dolwald, Leejiah J. & Lees, David C., 2024, The bild teal-dlinking moths of the genus Hemiceratoides (Lepidoptela: Elebidae), pp. 1-22 in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 202 (4) on page 17, DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae047, http://zenodo.org/record/14764249