Talicada nyseus

Technical description[edit] For a key to the terms used, see Glossary of entomology terms. Males and females. Upperside: black or brownish black, in fresh specimens in certain lights with a dull purplish flush. Fore wing: uniform, with a very slender thread-like edging of white to the costa. Hindwing: a large conspicuous orange-red patch on the posterior terminal half of the wing between the dorsum and vein 7; this patch does not extend quite to the termen but leaves a narrow edging of the black ground-colour which is produced inwards in short conical projections in interspaces 2 to 5. Cilia of both fore and hind wings chequered with black and white alternately. Underside: silvery white. Forewing: a quadrate spot on the discocellulars, a broad transverse discal band and the terminal third of the wing jet-black; the discal band is irregular, dislocated on vein 3, the posterior portion shifted inwards and joined onto the black area on the posterior terminal third of the wing by projections of black on the dorsum, along veins 3 and between veins 4 and 5; the black area on terminal third of the wing encloses a transverse postdiscal series of small round and a subterminal transversely near series of spots of the white ground-colour. Hind wing: two spots near base, a subbasal transverse series of three spots, a medial similar series of four somewhat elongate spots and a transverse short postdiscal bar between veins 4 and 6, jet-black; terminal third of the wing above vein 7 jet-black, below that vein deep orange-red, the whole area (both the black and the red) medially traversed by a transverse curved series of round spots of the white ground-colour and margined outwardly by a series of transverse, very short and very slender lines of the same in the interspaces; anticiliary line black. Cilia of both fore and hind wings chequered as on the upperside; a short filamentous tail at apex of vein 2 black, tipped white. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen black, shafts of the antennae ringed with white; beneath: palpi, thorax and abdomen while.[1]