Thaumatographa Walsingham 1897
Creators: name: Heppner, J. B.
name: Arita, Yutaka
name: Bae, Yang-Seop
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Tortricidae
Thaumatographa

description: THAUMATOGRAPHA Walsingham, 1897
Thaumatographa Walsignham, 1897: 52.
Type species: Hilarographa zapyra Meyrick, 1886 (New Guinea). Tharmatographa: Diakonoff, 1977b: 51, missp.
Diagnosis. Wing expanse range, 7.5–27.0mm (average size: 12–18 mm). The genus is defined in the tribe and distinguished from Hilarographa by the following particulars: the labial palpi are distinctly dorso-ventrally flattened (tubular in Hilarographa); in the male genitalia, the uncus is basally fused to the tegumen (membranous basally in Hilarographa), the hami are prominent and usually tubular, and the socii are sclerotic and usually slender, little setose, usually basally fused to the hami (socii wide, flattened and highly setose, and not fused to the hami in Hilarographa). The female genitalia usually have a bursal diverticular accessory sac, and the signum a bilobed fan-like form of numerous long spines curved inwardly, rarely absent or reduced (usually a scobinate patch in Hilarographa).
Descriptive Notes. Head: small compared to most tortricids; scales relatively appressed except caudally on vertex; eyes large; ocellus posterior and moderate (sometimes enlarged); antenna very short (less than 1/2 length of forewing), filiform but thickened, with ventral bristles usually long in males (short in females); haustellum short; maxillary palpus very small, 1-segmented; labial palpus moderate and recurved, with the apical segment dorso-ventrally flattened, the median segment smooth-scaled but with few very fine and short bristles (but not always exposed among the scales), and the basal segment mostly also smooth-scaled.
Thorax: average tortricoid, with mostly appressed scales; tegula short. Legs average for body size, mostly with scales appressed.
Forewing (Fig. 7): oblong, with costal margin slightly curved, termen truncated and apex and tornus more or less rounded; dorsal margin straight until anal curve; all veins free and mostly equally spaced, except R1 from middle of radius or from 2/3 of cell, and R2 and R3 sometimes close at end of chorda; chorda present, short (ca. 1/5 cell length), or vestigial; R5 to termen; median of cell vestigial; CuA1 from 2/3 end of cell; CuP at tornus, then vestigial toward base; A1+2 with relatively long basal fork.
Hindwing (Fig. 7): oblong-triangular to more oblong shape, with widely rounded tornus and anal margin; costa relatively straight; Sc to near apex; R to costa just before apex and M1 to termen just below apex and short-stalked with R near end of cell; cell from 1/2 to 3/5 length of hindwing; cell median vein vestigial; median veins equidistant at end of cell and at termen; M3 merged with CuA2 at end of cell; CuA1 from middle of cell or from 2/3 of cell; CuP vestigial or slightly at termen; 1A+2A with short basal fork; 3A long; male frenulum long; 2-bristle frenulum in females.
Abdomen: average for body size, but sometimes slightly elongated; thoracic articulation tortricoid but apodemes somewhat thin; male coremata usually present and short, but can be prominent and as long as pregenital segment.
Male genitalia (Fig. 8): hilarographine, with hami and socii prominent and usually long; tegumen and vinculum both generally triangular in shape, thin; uncus usually slender and very strongly sclerotized (rarely wide or short, or very long), and usually recurved caudally, basally fused to tegumen, and usually apically hooked; hami sclerotic and usually long and slender (rarely flattened or short); socii porrect or pendulate and long (rarely short and stubby), setose, usually slender and fused to base of hami; gnathos usually ovate to quadrate, and pendulate; transtilla usually present, band-like (or as valval stubs), sometimes caudally widened and even with caudal projections); juxta usually a small, caudally concave ovate plate; anellus a membranous and undeveloped ring; aedeagus tubular, short to long, sometimes with a distal lateral thorn; vesica finely scobinate, cornuti reduced or a single elongated tube (sometimes with an apical hook); phallobase often undeveloped, or small and bulbous, often ventrally decumbent; ductus ejaculatorius typically long, with prominent proximal elongated hood (rarely bulbous); valva oblong, usually quadratic with truncated termen and generally unadorned (sometimes with various ridges), but split open on dorsal margin (pouch-like split retains coremata in repose); saccus reduced and usually very short (rarely long), with acute apex, or sometimes a recurved truncated apex.
Female genitalia (Fig. 9): complicated bursal and accessory sac form, usually with very long narrow but straight ductus bursae; ovipositor usually somewhat short, with setose and elongated papilla anales; apophyses usually subequal and average length; dorsum of tergite 8 on ovipositor sometimes with an upright flattened membranous flap (either laterally flattened or horizontally flattened); ostium a varied funnel-shape, on the intersegmental membrane between sternites 7 and 8; sterigma usually little developed, as a sclerotized or membranous margin; ductus bursae usually a long membranous tube uniformly narrow (rarely short and wide), but sometimes sclerotized on the pre-ostial section (rarely with some modification or colliculum-like formation), sometimes with a small ventral sac-like diverticulum (see Fig. 15a) internally spiculate and emergent from the ductus bursae by the antrum (rarely distally bifid, see Fig 14a); ductus seminalis varied, usually from corpus bursae junction with ductus bursae (or from near ostium); corpus busae usually semi-ovate and asymmetrical with one end somewhat elongated (rarely more uniformly elongate-ovate), with an elongate-ovate diverticular accessory sac on a short and slender tube from caudal end of bursa and near emergence of ductus seminalis and ductus bursae (ductus seminalis rarely from caudal end of ductus bursae); signum usually a fan-like cluster of dense and long spines curved inwardly (rarely as a single cluster of short spines, or signum diffuse or absent).
Biology. Mostly unknown, but adults appear to all be diurnally active, yet may come to lights. Larvae are borers of shoots and roots as far as is known: Thaumatographa caminodes (Meyrick) feeding on roots of cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) and also a wild Zingiberaceae in Sri Lanka (Diakonoff 1986), Thaumatographa leucopyrga (Meyrick) in shoots of Ardisia sieboldi (Myrsinaceae) in Java (Indonesia), and Thaumatographa oenobapta Diakonoff in calyxes of Ixora (Rubiaceae), are the only examples known, but T. leucopyrga is not a typical member of the genus. The other species with biological data that have been included among Thaumatographa (Diakonoff & Arita 1981; Heppner 1983, 2025b), appear to all be pine trunk feeders (cambium layer) but are atypical and will be transferred to their own genus: Thaumatographa eremnotorna Diakonoff & Arita from Pinus densiflora (Pinaceae) in Japan; Thaumatographa regalis (Walsingham) from P. ponderosa and P. sabiniana in USA (California); and Thaumatographa cubensis Heppner from P. cubensis in Cuba. None of the other more tropical species of the genus have any host data available (likewise for species of Hilarographa from the Neotropics), so we do not know what tropical trees they may feed on, but perhaps the other Asian species are also on Myrsinaceae, Rubiaceae, and Zingiberaceae hosts.
The only larva and pupa of Hilarographini with detailed descriptions are for T. eremnotorna in Japan, with details described by Diakonoff & Arita (1981), but this species will be transferred to a related new genus of northern pine-feeding species (Heppner 2025b). The larval characters described for this species, nonetheless, may have the main characters applicable also to the tribe, since larvae of all the species are thought to be borers. The primary distinction of this borer larva from Japan is the bisetose state of the prothoracic L-group setae, normally trisetose in all other Tortricidae and including the other group of borer larvae in the subfamily Olethreutinae (Horak 1984, 1991, 1998; MacKay 1959, 1962, 1963).
Distribution. South Asia (India and Sri Lanka) to Southeast Asia, from Thailand to Vietnam and Indonesia (including Borneo, Java, Moluccas, Sulawesi, and Sumatra, and undoubtedly the other islands as well), north to southern China (Hainan, Hong Kong, Taiwan) and Japan, and in northeastern Australia (Queensland) and the South Pacific (New Guinea and Solomons, and an undescribed species from Tahiti) (Diakonoff 1986; Heppner 2025c, d; Razowski 2009a). The genus is undoubtedly also in the Philippines but has not been recorded there yet (Diakonoff 1968). Three species are recorded in North America (Heppner 1983), and one related pine-feeder from Cuba, but these are partially in a related new genus while two are in the genus Hilarographa. The pine feeders in the related genus occur in Japan, the Kuril Islands (Russian Far East) and North America (plus one in Cuba) (Diakonoff 1986; Heppner 1983, 2025b).
Discussion. Razowski (2017) synonymized Idiothauma Walsingham, 1897 with Hilarographa, but it remains a distinct genus of three African species (Heppner 2025d). These two genera and Thaumatographa are all closely related genera. Razowski (2009a) described numerous new species from Southeast Asia (all as ‘ Hilarographa ’ but transferred to Thaumatographa; see Heppner 2025d), with varying wing shapes and somewhat varied genital morphology, so further study will be needed to verify if all are really in the same genus. Most species of the genus are known from only single or very few specimens. The 2-bristle frenulum of female Thaumatographa conforms to this morphology in Hilarographini and for the subfamily Chlidanotinae, versus the 3-bristle norm for the remainder of tortricids (Yang & Brown 2009).
The thin ovate dorsal flap at the middle of tergite 8 in females is present in some Thaumatographa species but the function of this structure is unknown. Likewise, some species have a bulbous flap (or pouch) ventrally at the base of the ostial funnel at the caudel end of the ductus bursae, seemingly emergent approximate to the antrum (sometimes even distally bifid), but the function of this sac or pouch is also unknown.
description: Published as part of Heppner, J. B., Arita, Yutaka & Bae, Yang-Seop, 2025, Review of Thaumatographa tortricids in Taiwan (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae: Chlidanotinae: Hilarographini), pp. 271-292 in Zootaxa 5583 (2) on pages 273-275, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5583.2.3, http://zenodo.org/record/14798833