female
(Photo: courtesy of John Bromilow, Ainslie, Australian Capital Territory)

Both sexes of adult moth have uniformly greyish forewings with brown veins. The hindwings that are fawn at the margin, fading to white at the base. Each wing has a dark spot in the middle of it.

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

The forewing margins are more scalloped than in other Paralaea species. The wingspan is about 5 cms. The males have feathery antennae. The females have thread-like antennae.

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

Specimens have been caught in

(Photo: courtesy of Steve Williams, Moths of Victoria: Part 5)

The eggs are oval and laid in irregular clusters. The eggs initially are white but become dark purple as hatching approaches.

wing undersides
(Photo: courtesy of Marilyn Hewish, Moths of Victoria: Part 5)

Further reading :

Baron Cajetan & Rudolf Felder,
Zoologischer Theil,
Reise der Osterreichischen Fregatte Novara um die Erde in den Jahren 1857, 1858, 1859,
Part 9, Band 2, Abtheilung 2 (1875), p. 6, and also Plate 131, fig. 30.

Marilyn Hewish,
Moths of Victoria: Part 5,
Satin Moths and Allies - GEOMETROIDEA (A),
Entomological Society of Victoria, 2014, pp. 28-29.

N. McFarland,
Portraits of South Australian Geometrid Moths, Allen Press: Lawrence, Kansas (1988).

Peter B. McQuillan, Catherine J. Young, & Alistair M.M. Richardson,
A revision of the Australian moth genus Paralaea Guest (Lepidoptera: Geometridae: Ennominae),
Invertebrate Taxonomy,
Volume 15, part 3 (2001), pp. 277-317.

Cathy Byrne,
Characterisation of the Australian Nacophorini and a Phylogeny for the Geometridae from Molecular and Morphological Data,
Ph.D. thesis, University of Tasmania, 2003.

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(updated 4 March 2005, 14 January 2016)