| HEPIALIDAE, HEPIALOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
drawing by Norman B. Tindale, listed as Trictena argentata,
Revision of the Australian Ghost Moths (Lepidoptera Homoneura, Family Hepialidae),
Records of the South Australian Museum, Volume 4, Part 4 (1932), p. 504, fig. 10,
image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library,
digitized by South Australian Museum.
The caterpillars of this species are off-white shading to yellowish at the head and tail, and with a brown thorax. The caterpillars grow to a length of about 11 cms. Each lives in a vertical shaft in the ground with a depth of about 45 cms. The shaft does not break the ground surface until the the adult is about to emerge from the pupa, at which point the pupa is pushed to be half out of its tunnel
The adult moths have dark brown wings, each forewing having two ragged white stripes and various faint labyrinthine markings.
The species has been found in
Further reading :
Thomas J. Simonsen,
Splendid Ghost Moths and their Allies,
A Revision of Australian Abantiades, Oncopera, Aenetus, Archaeoaenetus and Zelotypia (Hepialidae),
Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera Volume 12,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 2018, pp. 92-95, 262, Plate 16: C.
Norman B. Tindale,
1932.
Revision of the Australian ghost moths (Lepidoptera Homoneura, Family Hepialidae). Part I,
Records of the South Australian Museum (Adelaide),
Volume 4: (1932), pp. 499-505.
 caterpillar |  butterflies |  Lepidoptera |  moths |  caterpillar |
(written 1 April 2018, updated 2 April 2018)