Cteipolia mimetica (L. Ronkay, 1995)

Volynkin, Anton V., Dûda, Juozas, Saldaitis, Aidas, Benedek, Balázs, Titov, Sergey V., Kalashian, Mark, Matov, Alexey Yu, Gorbunov, Pavel Yu. & Tóth, Balázs, 2024, On the taxonomy of the genus Cteipolia Staudinger (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae: Noctuinae) with descriptions of two new species from Transcaucasia and Central Asia, Ecologica Montenegrina 77, pp. 146-160 : 157

The C. mimetica / sacelli species-group

Diagnosis. Members of the species-group are superficially reminiscent of the C. tertia species-group with their large and dark orbicular and reniform stigmata having thin and sometimes indistinct pale edges, but the male genital capsule differs clearly from two other species-groups in the genus by the broad, swollen uncus having lateral triangular appendages and bearing a cluster of setae, and the apically dilated harpe. In contrast to the male genitalia, the female genitalia of the C. mimetica / sacelli species-group display no fundamental differences from the C. murina species-group and are characterised only by the presence of a pair of elongate signa bursae. However, the similarly elongate signa are found in C. vera belonging to the C. murina species-group but in this species they are more asymmetrical than in all members of the C. mimetica / sacelli species-group, females of which are known.

Notes. In their primary revision of the genus, Ronkay et al. (1995) illustrated only two female adults of C. sacelli and a drawing of the male genitalia, which is very similar to C. isotima and C. murina and therefore the conspecificity of this specimen to the female lectotype of C. sacelli is doubtful. This assumption is supported by the fact that subsequently, Gordeeva et al. (2023) illustrated a male adult, which is similar to the female lectotype of C. sacelli , but no photos of the male genitalia of the specimen were provided by the authors, which probably means that the male specimen illustrated remains undissected. The habitus of the lectotype of C. sacelli , as well as its female genitalia, are very similar to those of the members of the C. mimetica species-group, which have previously been known only from males, therefore C. sacelli is placed herein in this group. However, clarification of the relationships of this species requires the examination of the genitalia of the reliably identified male specimen.