Hypercompe robusta (Dognin, 1889)

Dognin, P. (1889). Diagnoses de Lépidoptères nouveaux. Le Naturaliste (2) 3
(11e année): p. 193. Described as Ecpantheria robusta. Translated from the
French original. (Reprinted in Dognin, P. (1891), Lépidoptères de Loja et
environs (Équateur): p. 50, pl. 4, fig. 10.)

Ecpantheria Robusta n. sp.

69 millimetres. Fore wings transparent over the greater part of their
surface, furnished with white scales at the base and along the costa. (It is
probable that at the moment of emergence this transparent part is covered
with a fine dust which flight quickly causes to fall off.) The costa is
adorned with four large smoky black spots, sometimes solid, sometimes with a
reddish white interior. At the very base of the wing is seen a spot of
brilliant metallic green followed by a first isolated ring, then by three
lines of irregular rings, of which the first, extrabasal, joins the second
costal spot and the two others are only sketched out, disappearing as soon
as they reach the transparent part of the wing.

Hind wings transparent and furnished with long, bushy hairs from the base to
the anal angle. On one of the two specimens that I possess these hairs are
almost entirely white, on the other mostly black with a bluish reflection.
In both specimens the tip of the anal angle is black with a greenish
reflection. Costa of the hind wings white with two large smoky black spots.

Underside of all four wings like the upper side, but with the markings less
pronounced.

Palpi white, frons metallic green, head white, collar white adorned with two
black rings, pterygodes white, likewise ringed with black, mesothorax white
with two pairs of elongate rings fused together, then two metallic green
spots, scutellum of the same green. Base of the abdomen furnished with long
black hairs, then a series of rings of a beautiful brilliant metallic green,
cut on each side by a yellow line and on the upper side by three or four
lines likewise yellow; anus white.

Underside of the abdomen white with three lines of black dots, underside of
the body hairy and white, legs white, black at the joints, tarsi black,
femora of the first pair metallic green.

Antennae metallic green, finely striped with white on the inner side.

Two ♂ from San-Francisco near Loja, August 1886.

This species approaches Columbina Obth. (Études d'Entomologie, 6th part,
pl. XVI, fig. 3), but its markings are ampler and broadly marked.

Hampson, G. F. (1901). Catalogue of the Lepidoptera Phalaenae in the British
Museum, vol. 3, Arctiadae (Arctianae) and Agaristidae: p. 379, no. 1923 (as
Ecpantheria robusta).

*1923. Ecpantheria robusta.

Ecpantheria robusta, Dognin, Lép. Loja, p. 50, pl. 4. f. 10 (1891); Kirby,
Cat. Het. pp. 215, 907.

♂. Head and thorax white; palpi and frons blue, the latter white below;
antennae blue-black; tegulae, patagia, and pro- and mesothorax with large,
paired, black-edged marks; metathorax with black-edged blue spots; legs
white spotted with black, the tarsi black; fore coxae blue; abdomen with the
first two segments black edged with blue, the other segments brilliant blue
with dorsal orange bands except towards extremity and oblique lateral marks,
the anal tuft white, the ventral surface white with series of black spots.
Fore wing white, with the area from middle of cell to apex and tornus
hyaline; black and blue marks at base; subbasal black-edged wedge-shaped
marks on costa and below cell; an antemedial series of lunules, the one in
cell small; two pairs of medial lunules on inner area; medial and postmedial
black spots on costa and a short streak on inner margin near tornus. Hind
wing hyaline, the inner area below vein 2 white with a diffused black fascia
on it joined by a patch below origin of vein 2; a patch on lobe at tornus,
which is slightly produced.

Hab. Ecuador, Loja. Exp. 76 millim. Type in Coll. Dognin.

Seitz, A. (1920). Ecpantheria. In: Seitz, A. (ed.), The Macrolepidoptera of
the World, vol. 6, The American Bombyces and Sphinges: p. 317. (German
edition: Die Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde 6: 317.)

E. robusta Dogn. Abdominal dorsum like in the preceding with a blue
reflection, but with transverse golden bands on the middle segments; in the
♂ the apical half of the forewing is unmarked, hyaline like in muzina, but
the former has a large orange spot on the greyish-brown abdominal dorsum
exhibiting a faint smalt reflection. Ecuador: Loja.

E. dognini Rothsch. resembles robusta, but it is smaller, the ♂ with a
white, not blackish-blue, chest; forehead and palpi brown, not blue; the
thoracic spots grey, not white, as in robusta; and whereas in robusta the
1st abdominal ring is grey, spotted steel-blue, it is brown in dognini; the
forewings of the ♂ are less hyaline and the hindwings not at all. Near Rio
de Janeiro and in the Organ Mountains. Rare.

"The preceding" species, with which Seitz compares robusta, is ocularia,
described by him on the same page (p. 317, pl. 40 g) as follows:

E. ocularia F. (= cyaneator Wkr., columbina Oberth.) (40 g). Like the
preceding with a black, lustrous blue dorsum of the abdomen, but the rings
on the forewing larger and more regular, in the ♂ those in the marginal
third obsolete; those in the ♀ are so large that they leave but very little
space between. Hindwings in the ♀ half blackened. — In ab. distans Oberth.
the ring-markings of the thorax have disappeared, the wings are partly
tinged brown. — Colombia.