Description of a new species from the genus Eugoa Walker, 1858 (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae) from the Solomon Islands.

Abstract

The genus Eugoa Walker, 1858 belongs to the tribe Lithosiini and occurs across the Old World, excluding the Western Palearctic Region. Currently, it contains around 120 species, most of them distributed across Asia (Bucsek 2016a, b; Dubatolov Bucsek 2016; Schaus 1922). Ten additional species have been described from Australasia (Bethune-Baker 1904; Rothschild 1915). Since the 19th century, several authors have addressed the taxonomy of the genus Eugoa (Buscek 2008, 2012, 2016a, b; Černý Bucsek 2014; Hampson 1891, 1898, 1900; Rothschild 1915; Seitz 1914; Van Eecke 1930), but only a few described their habitat preferences (e.g. Holloway 2001). These small to medium sized moths with brown, or brown-cream coloured forewings inhabit a wide range of forest types (e.g. alluvial, dipterocarp, heath, kerangas, etc.) from mangroves and lowland-coastal forests (about 300m asl) up to upper montane forests (about 1500 m asl). Unfortunately, life history data for species in the genus Eugoa still remain unavailable.