Taxonomy | Tortricidae | Olethreutinae

Sycacantha inodes is confirmed for Hong Kong.
Sounds easy, but there's a complicated background to this story.

Starts back in 1981, when the Oxford University Far East Expedition diverted from Borneo to Hong Kong and undertook a few months moth recording here.
All the Tortricidae material was written up by Dr. John Bradley, a global authority on Tortricidae, for the OUFEE report (1982). He misidentified a fairly commonly recorded tortrix as Sisona albitibiana (Snellen, 1902) in the literature known only from the type material, recorded from Java (Diakonoff, 1973).

For my work in the 1990s in Hong Kong (my BSc final year project and my PhD fieldwork) I recorded the same species (without reference to the Bradley report) as females of Cryptophlebia repletana.

Now, writing the third (and final) draft of the tortricid section for the forthcoming Illustrated Guide to the Moths of Hong Kong, I have been able to trace the errors of the past through the relative ease of access to information provided on the internet, and updated works on the genus Sycacantha.

Over the last few years, a number of observations of unidentified olethreutine species from Hong Kong have been placed on iNat. I have finally been able to go through old and new resources that have enabled most of these taxa to be placed to genus (either Sycacantha or Phaecasiophora), as well as some to species rank.

One of the main problems I had was with the "female" Cryptophlebia repletana, an identification I was not happy with upon seeing Pinkaew's PhD thesis from 2006 on the Olethreutinae from Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand, which illustrated both Cryptophlebia repletana and a number of Sycacantha species, including one that resembles the "female" Cryptophlebia repletana of my fieldwork.

Searching further for information on Sisona and Sycacantha, I found the recent paper in Zootaxa (Feng et al., 2019) on Chinese Sycacantha listed S. inodes and S. inopinata, the former listing albitibiana Meyrick as a synonym - that's a bit of a red herring!!; also consulted was Razowski's 2009 paper on Diakonoff's type material in the Munich Museum, which listed and illustrated Sycacantha inodes ssp. rubida. To check these leads, I consulted Diakinoff's 1973 tome on South Asiatic Olethreutinae, which explained that Meyrick had confused albitibiana with a number of similar looking Sycacantha species ! Just as J.D.Bradley had for the Hong Kong material.

To further cross check, I used the Tortricid.net global database, which lists albitibiana, but states the type is lost. Fortunately, Diakonoff stated that the lectotype was in Leiden Museum and the current Lepidoptera curator there, Rob de Vos, is an active participant of various social media for Oriental Lepidoptera. He graciously checked and found the lectotype, sending a photo thereof for comparison with the Hong Kong "albitibiana / female repletana", as well as Leiden material of Sycacantha inodes. The HK material matches inodes and albitibiana remains represented only by the lectotype specimen found from Java in the 1880s.

So Sycacantha inodes is confirmed for Hong Kong, and is separated from S. inopinata (confirmed for HK by Prof. Li Hou Hun, as reported in Feng et al., 2019, and what Bradley had reported as Sisona albitibiana) by the generally darker ground colour, a more extensive dark brown basal zone and the presence of a dark brown blotch near the forewing termen. The species Sisona albitibiana does not occur in Hong Kong.
You have been informed !

That's one more taxonomic issue resolved for the Hong Kong moth fauna. Hundreds still awaiting investigation.

References
Bradley, J.D., 1982. Report on the Tortricoidea collected in Hong Kong by the Oxford Far East Expedition 1981. In Barnes, M.J.C.; Davies, C.R.; Lewis, G.B. & Matthews, M.J. The Oxford Far East Expedition, 1981. Final Report. The University of Oxford. pp. 90-92.
Diakonoff, A., 1973. The South Asiatic Olethreutini (Lepidoptera, Tortricidae). E.J.Brill, Leiden. (Zoölogische Monographieën van het Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie 1). xxi + 699 pp.; 732 figs., 15 plates
Feng, W.X.; Zhuang, J.L. & Yu, H.L., 2019. Sycacantha Diakonoff, 1959 from China, with the descriptions of three new species (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae: Olethreutinae). Zootaxa 4691 (3): 201–214. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4691.3.1
Kendrick, R.C., 2002. Moths (Insecta: Lepidoptera) of Hong Kong. Ph.D. thesis, The University of Hong Kong. xvi + 660pp, 47 plates, 40 figs
Pinkaew, N., 2006. Taxonomy of Olethreutinae (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) of Thong Pha Phum National Park, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand. Ph.D. thesis, Kasetart Univeristy, Thailand. 578 pp.
Razowski, J., 2009. Tortricidae from Vietnam in the collection of the Berlin Museum. 6. Olethreutinae (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae). SHILAP Revista de Lepidopterología 37 (145): 115-143

Posted on August 28, 2020 03:27 PM by hkmoths