male
(Photo: courtesy of CSIRO/BIO Photography Group, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph)

The male adult moths have a pattern of light and dark fawn on the wings. They have a wingspan of about 5 cms.

female
(Photo: courtesy of David Blockow, Swan Reach, South Australia)

The females have reduced wings and cannot fly. The females are much larger than the males, with a length of about 6 cms..

The eggs are laid as a gelatinous mass in the earth by the female pushing her abdomen into the soil. The eggs are spheroidal and off-white wth a brown tip, and have a diameter of about 1 mm.

(Photo: copyright of Brett and Marie Smith, at Ellura Sanctuary, South Australia)

The species generally occurs in inland Australia, including

Further reading :

Ian F.B. Common,
Moths of Australia, Melbourne University Press, 1990, figs. 27.4, 27.5, p. 271.

Peter B. McQuillan, Jan A. Forrest, David Keane, & Roger Grund,
Caterpillars, moths, and their plants of Southern Australia,
Butterfly Conservation South Australia Inc., Adelaide (2019), pp. 68-69.

A. Jefferis Turner,
New Australian Lepidoptera,
Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia,
Volume 56 (1932), p. 195.

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(updated 23 July 2010, 24 February 2017, 22 May 2021, 20 February 2022)