The caterpillar pupates in a tough oval cocoon stuck on a twig.

Photo: courtesy of Buck Richardson, from
Tropical Queensland Wildlife from Dusk to Dawn Science and Art

The adult moth has freckly brown forewings, each with three prominent orange spots, two edged with expanded white areas. The hindwings and abdomen are brown, and the thorax is off-white and hairy. The wingspan is about 2.5 cms.

(Photo: courtesy of Jeff Keyes, Sportsman Creek Wildlife Refuge, New South Wales)

It is thought that Pseudanapaea transvestita is basically a southern species, but sightings have been reported from

drawing by Erich Martin Hering,
Bombyces and Sphinges of the Indo-Australian Region, Plate 86, Fig. g4,
in Adalbert Seitz (ed.): The Macrolepidoptera of the World, Volume 10 (1933),
image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized by Natural History Museum Library, London.

It is possible that the specimens found in eastern Australia north of the Queensland border listed as Pseudanapaea transvestita may be misidentifications of Pseudanapaea denotata, and the ones from Western Australia are possible misidentifications of Pseudanapaea dentifascia, but it is also possible that all these names have been mis-applied to other so-far unnamed species in the genus Pseudanapaea.

underside
(Photo: courtesy of Graeme Cocks, Townsville, Queensland)

Further reading :

Erich Martin Hering,
Bombyces and Sphinges of the Indo-Australian Region,
in Adalbert Seitz (ed.): The Macrolepidoptera of the World,
Volume 10 (1933), p. 683, and also Plate 86, Fig. g4.

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), p. 74.

Buck Richardson,
Tropical Queensland Wildlife from Dusk to Dawn Science and Art,
LeapFrogOz, Kuranda, 2015, p. 106.

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(updated 23 December 2012, 13 May 2025)