Crops > Trees, palms & pandanus > Trees > Ricinus, castor oil > Olene mendosa, castor oil, Vietnam, France



Crops > Trees, palms & pandanus > Trees > Ricinus, castor oil > Olene mendosa, castor oil, Vietnam, France

Crops Trees, palms & pandanus Trees Ricinus, castor oil Olene mendosa, castor oil, Vietnam, France

Olene mendosa, castor oil, Vietnam, France

December 2011. A caterpillar eating castor oil, Binh Thuan, Vietnam for identification.

It was identified as a lymantriid,Olene mendosa. Hübner. See, www.mothsofborneo.com/part-5/orgyiini/orgyiini_3_1.php.

It looks like some Dasychira spp. and Euproctis spp. among the common lymantriids of Southeast Asia. O. mendosais highly polyphagous and castor is one of its host plants.

A member wrote:

The “confusion” stems from the transfer of mendosa from Dasychirato Olene in Holloway’s treatment of the Orgyiini within the Lymantriinae in the Moths of Borneo (as pointed to by Matthew Cock). Recent revisions of the taxonomy within Noctuoidea, has resulted in the tussock moth family Lymantriidae being demoted one rank, to a subfamily within the restored family Erebidae (see 1) Lafontaine & Schmidt (2010) ZooKeys vol. 40 (www.pensoft.net/journals/zookeys/issue/40/) – and Zahiri et al. (2011) Syst. Ent. 36(4) (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3113.2011.00607.x/full).