Eucosmocydia mixographa

Eucosmocydia mixographa (Meyrick, 1939)

Fig. 5, 38

Laspeyresia mixographa Meyrick 1939: 51.

[Grapholitini unplaced] mixographa: Brown 2005: 366.

Eucosmocydia mixographa: Razowski et al. 2010: 29, fig. 47, 114.

Diagnosis. This species has a slightly more two-toned forewing than most species in the genus, with a densely checkered orange basal half and a darker distal half, with the halves conspicuously separated by a slightly arched, black median fascia extending from the costa to the hind margin. In facies, E. mixographa is most similar to E. deinbolliana, but in E. mixographa the basal half of the forewing is yellow-orange followed by blackish maculation, whereas in E. deinbolliana the basal half of the forewing is mostly brownish.

Redescription. Male. Not examined. Female. Head. Vertex and frons pale yellow-orange; labial palpus pale yellow-orange; antenna with narrow ring of pale-yellow scales on each flagellomere. Thorax. Nota covered with orange-tipped brown scales; tegula long, with flat orange-tipped brown scales. Forewing (Fig. 5) length 4.5–4.8 mm (n = 2); forewing expanding terminad; distal half of costa bent; termen with shallow subapical notch, convex beneath notch; upperside ground color yellow-brown, tinged rust to middle; costal strigulae white, well developed beyond middle; speculum brown with orange marks, followed by whitish, convex line; basal area limited by concave brown line edged with white posteriorly; black-brown markings across wing followed by yellow-rust subtornal area; tornal area brown. Fringe brownish gray with some orange adjacent to speculum, darker brown towards tornus. Hindwing dark brown, fringe grey-brown. Abdomen. Genitalia (Fig. 38) with papillae anales slender, slightly expanded posteriorly; apophyses as described for genus; sterigma mostly membranous, with a pair of somewhat faint, weakly scobinate, oblong patches in post-ostial area, anterior margin of sterigma narrow crescent-shaped; ductus bursae long, slender; corpus bursae ovoid with a pair of thorn-shaped signa.

DNA barcode. There are two identical sequences of this species (BIN: AAU2217) in BOLD, both from Nigeria. In the ML tree (Fig. 1), E. mixographa is sister to E. pappeana.

Types. Lectotype ♀, Eala, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mar 1936, Ghesquière; genital prep. 98060 L. Aarvik (RMCA). Paralectotype: Same data as holotype (1♂) (BMNH).

Additional specimens examined: Nigeria: Oyo State, Ibadan, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, 7.5008°N, 3.9065°E, 240 m, 16 Jun 2006 (1♀), 30 Jun 2006 (1♀), G. M. Miller & T. M. Kuklenski, USNM slide 143,434 (USNM).

Distribution and biology. This species is known from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria. Ghesquière (1940) reported “Caterpillars in immature pods of Piptadenia africana [H. f. (Fabaceae)] and fruits of Mallotus oppositifolius [Muell.-Arg. (Euphorbiaceae)] together with Carposina impavida ” (Carposinidae). These observations suggest that E. mixographa may be a generalist scavenger in dead or decaying fruit tissues, and not a specialist, as its congeners appear to be.

Remarks. This species was described from two specimens, both from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The lectotype was selected by Aarvik in 1998 but was not published until 2010 when Razowski et al. (2010) provisionally assigned the species to Eucosmocydia based on similarities of the genitalia with other African species of that genus. The genitalia of the two females from Nigeria appear to closely match those of the lectotype, even though the forewing pattern of those two specimens differs slightly from that of the lectotype.