Amerilini

Singh, Navneet, Joshi, Rahul, Kirti, Jagbir Singh, Bisht, Santosh Singh & Param, Harsimranjeet Singh, 2021, A catalogue of Indian Arctiinae (Erebidae, Lepidoptera), Zootaxa 5058 (1), pp. 1-118 : 12

Amerilini

Diagnostic characters: The species of a monogeneric tribe Amerilini are medium to large sized (wingspan 17-32 mm) and quite robust, proboscis is particularly well developed, antennae are filiform in both sexes and the flagellum comprise 80 segments, forewings are elongated, comparatively narrow and often fully or partly transparent medially; hindwings are much shorter than forewings and generally weakly scaled ( Häuser & Boppré 1997). The genus was traditionally included in the tribe Arctiini based on its superficial similarity to some other tropical genera. However, modern phylogenetical studies based on genetic data provided the evidence that Amerila rather constitutes a sister group to the Syntomini+ Arctiini clade formally proposed as the tribe Amerilini by Dubatolov (2010) and confirmed by further phylogenetic studies ( Zahiri et al. 2012; Zaspel et al. 2014; Zenker et al. 2016).

Diversity & Distribution: In India, tribe Amerilini are known by four species of genus Amerila Walker, 1855 , accounting for 6.06 % of the global Amerilini moths. Out of the four species, A. astreus (Drury) , and A. rhodopa Walker are distributed throughout India whereas, A. omissa (Rothschild) is reported from Himalaya and A. eugenia (Fabricius) is a species of plains of India.