A new species of Micardia Butler, 1878 (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae, Eustrotiinae) from China

Abstract

The genus Micardia Butler, 1878 was described based on M. argentata (the type species; Fig. 1) and M. pulchra, both from Japan; in the same paper, Buter transferred a species described from India, Leucania pulcherrima Moore, 1867 to Micardia. Hampson (1990) considered Micardia a synonym of Eustrotia. However, its generic status was revised by Warren (1913) and retained by subsequent authors (Ueda 1984). There are at present 13 species recognized within Micardia (Table 1), of which, M. quadrilinea Scriba 1921 was described from Japan on the basis of female specimens and without high-quality illustrations, and subsequently treated as of uncertain status by Chen & Xue (2012). The remaining species are as follows: M. simplicissima Berio 1973 was described from Myanmar based on 2 females. M. munda Leech, 1900, was described from Western China (Sichuan, according to Chen & Xue 2012). Chen (1999) extended the range of M. pulcherrima to include China, and Chen & Xue (2012) subsequently reviewed Micardia from China, describing three new species, M. pallens, M. distincta and M. minuta. Four species have been described from Madagascar, M. argentoidea and M. terracottoides by Berio (1954), and M. ikoly and M. itremo by Viette (1982). Because they are geographically separated so widely from their congeners in Asia, Chen & Xue (2012) considered their generic placement in need of confirmation. Moreover, the distribution of M. pulchra Butler was extended to Russia (Kurile Island) by synonymizing it with M. pulchrargentea Bryk, 1942 (Kononenko 2005). In this paper we report a new species, Micardia yixingensis, sp. nov. from Jiangsu, China. The contribution brings the total number of the species in the genus to 14.