Thaumatographa Walsingham, 1897

Heppner, Jhon B. & Bae, Yang-Seop, 2025, Thaumatographa tortricids in Vietnam (Lepidoptera, Tortricidae, Chlidanotinae, Hilarographini), Zootaxa 5609 (3), pp. 375-389 : 376-377

Genus Thaumatographa Walsingham, 1897

Thaumatographa Walsignham, 1897: 52 .

Type species: Hilarographa zapyra Meyrick, 1886 ( New Guinea)

Tharmatographa Diakonoff, 1977b: 51 , missp.

Diagnosis. Wing expanse range, 7.5–27.0mm (average size: 12–18mm). The genus is defined in the tribe and distinguished from Hilarographa by the following particulars: the labial palpi are distinctly dorso-ventrally flattened (tubular in Hilarographa ); in the male genitalia, the uncus is basally fused to the tegumen (membranous basally in Hilarographa ), the hami are prominent and usually tubular, and the socii are sclerotic and usually slender, little setose, usually basally fused to the hami (socii wide, flattened and highly setose, and not fused to the hami in Hilarographa ). The female genitalia usually have a bursal diverticular accessory sac, and the signum a bilobed fan-like form of numerous long spines curved inwardly, rarely absent or reduced (usually a scobinate patch in Hilarographa ).

Descriptive notes. Heppner et al. (2025) gave a detailed descriptive review of the generic characters for Thaumatographa . The main distinctive features include the small head (noticeably smaller than most tortricids), the upturned, smooth-scaled and typically flattened labial palpus (mostly porrect in other tortricids, with the apical palpal segment usually somewhat decumbent, and mid-segment ventral scale tufts), and the very colorful forewing maculation (many species with orange markings) and somber hindwings (but often with a median orange diffusion going to the wing base); antennae are usually short (less than half forewing length) and with short ventral cilia (rarely longer) in males.

The male genitalia have the uncus usually narrow, strongly sclerotic and bent, and basally fused with the tegumen (membranous joint in Hilarographa , all Neotropical plus two species in North America); paired hami usually sclerotic and slender (but rarely more flattened); a long pair of setose socii (but rarely short and stubby); the gnathos is usually short, ovate to quadrate, and pendulate; the valva typically simple and elongated, usually without ornamentation except for a single dense setal patch; a transtilla band or less frequently more elaborated into a complex structure (rarely stubby and incomplete); the juxta usually a small ovate plate, often slightly caudally concave and the dorsal margin truncated; the anellus usually a membranous ring; the aedeagus usually narrow and tubular (rarely short), with one long or few cornuti, phallobase usually prominent and bulbous proximally (rarely undeveloped), and the ductus ejaculatorius usually is long and with a proximal hood (rarely short); and the vinculum usually triangular with a little developed or stubby saccus. The abdomen of males typically has a pair of lateral coremata on the pregenital sternum, which is usually somewhat caudally invaginated.

The female genitalia typically have a short ovipositor, and very long and thin ductus bursae (rarely short); the sterigma is usually simple and not ornamented; the bursa is usually asymmetrically ovate, with an accessory sac on a short tubular section adjacent to both the ductus bursae juncture and the ductus seminalis juncture from one end of the bursa, thus all three of their tubules approximate from the bursa (but some species have the ductus seminalis from the caudal end of the ductus bursae).

Biology. Mostly unknown, but adults appear to all be diurnally active, yet may come to lights. Larvae are borers of shoots and roots as far as is known: Thaumatographa caminodes (Meyrick) feeding on roots of cardamom ( Elettaria cardamomum ) and also a wild Zingiberaceae in Sri Lanka ( Diakonoff 1986), T. leucopyrga (Meyrick) in shoots of Ardisia sieboldi ( Myrsinaceae ) in Java ( Indonesia), and T. oenobapta Diakonoff in calyxes of Ixora ( Rubiaceae ), are the only examples known, but T. leucopyrga is not a typical member of the genus. The other species with biological data that have been included among Thaumatographa ( Diakonoff & Arita 1981; Heppner 1983, 2025a), appear to all be pine trunk feeders (cambium layer) but are atypical and will be transferred to their own genus. None of the other more tropical species of the genus have any host data available (likewise for species of Hilarographa from the Neotropics), so we do not know what tropical trees they may feed on, but perhaps the other Asian species are also on Myrsinaceae , Rubiaceae , and Zingiberaceae hosts.

The only larva and pupa of Hilarographini with detailed descriptions are for T. eremnotorna in Japan, with details described by Diakonoff & Arita (1981), but this species will be transferred to a related new genus of northern pine-feeding species ( Heppner 2025a). The larval characters described for this species, nonetheless, may have the main characters applicable also to the tribe, since larvae of all the species are thought to be borers. The primary distinction of this borer larva from Japan is the bisetose state of the prothoracic L-group setae, normally trisetose in all other Tortricidae and including the other group of borer larvae in the subfamily Olethreutinae ( Horak 1984, 1991, 1998; MacKay 1959, 1962, 1963).

Distribution. South Asia ( India and Sri Lanka) to Southeast Asia, from Thailand to Vietnam and Indonesia (including Borneo, Java, Moluccas, Sulawesi, and Sumatra, and undoubtedly the other islands as well), north to southern China (Hainan and Hong Kong), Taiwan and Japan, and in northeastern Australia (Queensland) and the South Pacific (New Guinea and Solomons, and an undescribed species from Tahiti) ( Diakonoff 1986; Heppner 2025b, c; Razowski 2009). The genus is undoubtedly also in the Philippines but has not been recorded there yet ( Diakonoff 1968). Three species are recorded in North America ( Heppner 1983), and one related pine-feeder from Cuba, but these are partially in a related new genus while two are in the genus Hilarographa . The pine feeders in the related genus occur in Japan, the Kuril Islands (Russian Far East) and North America (plus one in Cuba) ( Diakonoff 1986; Heppner 1983, 2025a).

Discussion. Most species of the genus are known from only single or very few specimens. The 2-bristle frenulum of female Thaumatographa conforms to this morphology in Hilarographini and for the subfamily Chlidanotinae , versus the 3-bristle norm for the remainder of tortricids ( Yang & Brown 2009). A thin ovate dorsal flap at the middle of tergite 8 in females is present in some Thaumatographa species but the function of this structure is unknown. Likewise, some species have a small bulbous appendage sac (or pouch) ventrally at the base of the ostial funnel at the caudal end of the ductus bursae, seemingly emergent approximate to the antrum (sometimes even distally bifid), but the function of this sac or pouch is also unknown. The small head and upcurved labial palpi also are very typical of hilarographines but very atypical for Tortricidae , thus the century-long placement (from 1877 to 1977) of the genus among the so-called ‘Glyphipterigidae’ ( Diakonoff 1977b; Heppner 1978, 1982a, b). Adults often have the labial palpus dorsally iridescent pale blue to metallic blue-silver on the apical segment, depending on light angles.

The species of Thaumatographa in Vietnam show an assemblage of the different types of male genitalia found in the genus, as noted below for each new species. With most of Vietnam going a long way south from the northern provinces, it is very likely that many more species of the genus remain undiscovered in central and southern Vietnam. These moths are certainly very rare, and no Hilarographini were reported in the extensive treatment of Vietnam tortricids in several papers by Razowski, summarized in the faunal review of Nedoshivina (2013) (the tribe was included in this review but only for two genera now known to belong to Archipini, so no true Hilarographini have been verified for Vietnam until now); and likewise, the older lists of Vietnam moths did not include any hilarographine tortricids ( Candèze 1927, Joannis 1928 –30).