''Hypocala violacea'' is a species of

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

of the family

Erebidae The Erebidae are a family of moths in the superfamily Noctuoidea. The family is among the largest families of moths by species count and contains a wide variety of well-known macromoth groups. The family includes the underwings ('' Catocala'') ...

first described by Arthur Gardiner Butler in 1879. It is found in the Indo-Australian tropics of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, and

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

Description

The adult forewings are a uniform rufous and violet brown, marks on the distal margin being reduced to a pair of dots at the tornus, the inner one white, the outer one black, ringed white, an enlarged member of the marginal row of white dots. The hindwing underside is broadly fawn over the anterior half, with darker striae. Sri Lankan specimens have black markings on dorsal side of hindwings and ventral side of forewings are rather narrow. The caterpillar has a variably orange to black head, and black body. Around each spiracle, there is an orange patch. Its ventral surface is fuscous green. The larvae feed on '' Diospyros'' species.

References

External links

Species info''Australian Faunal Directory''
Moths of Australia Hypocalinae Moths of Asia Moths of Japan Moths described in 1879 {{Hypocalinae-stub