Carmenta angarodes Meyrick

Carmenta angarodes (Meyrick)

Sesia angarodes Meyrick, 1921:443.

Synanthedon semitrista Zukowsky, 1936:1236, n. syn.

Diagnosis. Wing length: males = 9­12 mm; females = 12­14 mm. According to Marten (Zukowsky 1936), the male and female syntypes were found in copula, and he remarked that their association should not be in doubt. The sexes are considerably dimorphic, with the male having hyaline wings and the female having totally opaque forewings, dark brown with pale yellow to white toward the wing tips. The male has a slender body, dark with blue­green sheen and with a somewhat elongate, divided anal tuft. The female body is robust and dull dark brown. The male thorax has much orange to orange red laterally, and the head has white on the labial palps, both characters lacking on the female.

Redescription. Male (Fig. 10). Head with vertex brown black with blue­green sheen; occipital fringe dorsally brown black with pale yellow mixed, laterally white; front white laterally; labial palpus relatively smoothly scaled, brown black, white ventrally; antenna brown black. Thorax with narrow subdorsal orange or orange­red stripe; mostly orange laterally beneath wings. Abdomen brown black with blue­green sheen; ventrally powdering white; anal tuft divided into two lateral, elongate tufts. Legs with white on most of forecoxa, laterally on basal half of fore­ and mid­tibiae, slight mixed dorsally on medial tuft of hind tibia and dorsally at joints of tarsal segments. Forewing mostly hyaline, with narrow discal spot, broad to narrow apical margin; apical and anal margins often variously, lightly powdering pale yellow. Hindwing hyaline, no discal spot. Genitalia (Fig. 14) with bare area of valvae reduced; saccus thin, less than one­third length of valvae; scopula androconialis one­half length of valvae.

Female (Fig. 11): Very different from male. Thorax lacking orange of male. Abdomen brown black. Legs lacking white of male. Forewing opaque, brown black, with apical area pale yellow to white (more extensively ventrally). Hindwing mostly hyaline, with some brown black anteriorly in discal cell and on anal fold. Genitalia (Fig. 23) with antrum initially membranous, slightly curving, gradually becoming pigmented distally; ductus bursae short, some pigmentation; corpus bursae ovoid, without signum.

Distribution. BRAZIL: Rio de Janeiro; Manaus; Rondonia. ECUADOR: Bucay; Napo. GUYANA: R. S. Parish, Mallali. COSTA RICA: Turrialba.

Types. angarodes: Holotype male ­ BRAZIL: "Holo­type; Manaus, Brazil, Parish, 11.19; Aegeria angarodes Meyr., 1/1, E. Meyrick det. In Meyrick Coll.; Meyrick Coll., B.M. 1938­290; angarodes Meyr. " (BMNH)

semitrista: Lectotype male ­ BRAZIL: "8; semitrista, Marten; 60 (red circle), Rio, 14.4.27; Saarbrücken; LECTOTYPE male, Synanthedon semitrista Zukowsky, By T.D. Eichlin!77."

Remarks. Based on label data, adults were captured in April, August, October and November. One additional female from Equador was found in material from the Bishop Museum, Hawaii, and very recently, a female was captured in a flight trap in Equador by Fred Andrews (CSCA). The seven males from Rondonia were net collected when responding to artificial sex attractant (Z,Z 3,13­octadecadien­1­ol acetate) (Eric Fisher, CSCA, pers. comm.). In the Neotropics the color pattern described above for female angarodes (dark opaque forewings with whitish scaling apically) is a repeating pattern seen in other species of Sesiidae in all three subfamilies and in different genera within a subfamily (see Discussion of Sophona leucoteles (Clarke) in Eichlin 1986:345).