A revision of the genus Deltote RL and its allied genera from Japan ...

94 Kyoichiro Ueda
Canberra), Dr. W. Hogenes (Institute voor Taxonomische Zoologie, Amsterdam),
Drs. D. R. Davis and J. B. Heppner (National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution Washington, D. C), Dr. G. S. Robinson and Miss. R
Gilbert (British Museum of Natural History) and Dr. Kauri Mikkola (Zoological
Museum of the Helsinki University, Helsinki) for their kindness in giving me the
opportunities to examine their valuable specimens and literatures.
3. Character states and phylogenetic considerations
In the classification of Acontiinae, the characters used in the grouping of
genera or species have been restricted to venation, wing patterns, the number of
dorsal crests and shape oflabial palpus (Hampson, 1910). Infact, these characters
are very useful ones, because we could observe these character states without
dissection. However, these characters have rather limited phylogenetic significance,
as we could easily find many examples of individual variations and parallelism
on these characters, i.e., the individual variation on the venation from the areole
on fore wing (Fig. 2), the same number of dorsal crests among many genera,
which are apparently not related to each other, and so on. Consequently, each
genus ofAcontiinae will be often found to embrace heterogeneous elements inthem.
Therefore I reexamined these character states according to the criteria men
tioned below to make tentative judgement of each character state-plesiomorphic
or apomorphic. In addition to characters used in Hampson's classification I
examined the structure of male external genitalia, their musculature and the
structure offemale genitalia, because these structures have been used in systematics
ofLepidoptera and their validity has been found in many works.
Fig. 2.
Individual variations on the venations arising from the areole offore wing
{Koyaga falsa (Butler)).