. They live in vertical tunnels in the ground by day and come out at night to feed on leaves.

(Photo: courtesy of Jenny Holmes, Great Western, Victoria)

The adult moths are brown, sometimes spotted, often with a partial white streak, and a dark spot in the middle of each forewing. The scales on the wings are very loose, easily rubbing off. The male moths have a wingspan of about 2.5 cms. The females have a wingspan of about 3.5 cms.

(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

The species is found over most of the southern half of Australia, including

Further reading :

Axel Kallies,
Moths of Victoria - Part 6,
Ghost Moths - HEPIALIDAE and Allies,
Entomological Society of Victoria, 2015, pp. 6-7, 10-11.

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. 38-39.

Nielsen E.S. & Kristensen N.P.
Primitive Ghost Moths : Morphology and Taxonomy of the Australian Genus Fraus Walker (Lepidoptera: Hepialidae s. lat.)
Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera Volume 1,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 1989.

Francis Walker,
Catalogue of Lepidoptera Heterocera,
List of the Specimens of Lepidopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum,
Part 7 (1856), p. 1564, No. 1.

previous caterpillar

Australian butterflies

Australian Lepidoptera

Australian moths

next caterpillar

(updated 15 July 2010, 16 December 2016, 30 April 2019, 27 September 2020)