Tamba Walker, 1869: 94

Singh, Navneet, Ahmad, Jalil & Raha, Angshuman, 2022, Contribution to the Erebidae fauna of the Great Nicobar Island, India with description of two new species (Lepidoptera: Noctuoidea), Zootaxa 5165 (1), pp. 79-94 : 86

Genus Tamba Walker, 1869: 94

Type species: Tamba submicacea Walker, 1869 (Type locality: Benares [Varanasi, India])

= Obdora Walker, 1869: 95 .

Taxonomic notes: Tamba is a diverse tropical and subtropical genus including about 75–80 medium to large bodied and delicate species. The genus is well spread throughout the Oriental and Indo-Australian tropics with exceptionally high diversity in the Sundaland and New Guinea. Few species also extend their distributions to higher latitudes, such as in the Himalayas, China, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Till date, ten species of Tamba have been reported from India, distributed in North India, Central and East Himalaya, North-East India and Andaman Islands. Although diverse, these moths have distinctive more or less uniformly patterned wings with pale reddish-brown, fawn or greyish ground colour on which the postmedial is generally angled or curved beyond the discal area of forewing. The hindwing is usually of the similar pattern as the forewing. In males, the antennae are ciliate and legs often bear tufts of scale crests and hair pencils. The eighth sternite in the male abdomen also has a pair of hair pencils and often a third smaller one is centrally located anterior to them. The male genitalia are usually elongate with uncus giving rise to a tuft of hairs from its dorsal concavity. The tegumen is much shorter than the vinculum with a central setose expansion or lobe on each side. The distal part of the valva is reduced to a small lobe and two or three processes extend from the costa base to the sacculus apex, thus making up most of the valva length. The aedeagus is usually long, narrow with basally broad tubular vesica, sometimes bearing small diverticula. Larvae of several species of Tamba were recorded to feed on Aporusa (Euphorbiaceae) , Barringtonia (Lecythidaceae) , Sandoricum (Meliaceae) and Symphorema (Verbenaceae) ( Robinson et al. 2001). Many of the Tamba species are recorded from the lowland softwood plantations in Sabah ( Chey 1994).