Philobota arabella (Newman, 1856)
 (previously known as Oecophora arabella)
PHILOBOTA GROUP
OECOPHORINAE,   OECOPHORIDAE,   GELECHIOIDEA
 
Don Herbison-Evans,
(donherbisonevans@yahoo.com)
and
Wendy Moore & Stella Crossley

Philobota arabella     Philobota arabella
(Photos: courtesy of Wendy Moore, Melbourne, Victoria)

This adult moth has orange forewings which have a broad brown hairy margin, a brown sub-costal stripe, and a brown stripe along the hind margin. The hindwings are brown. The wingspan is about 2.5 cms. The moths are found typically in September and October.

Philobota arabella
(Photo: courtesy of Laura Levens, Upper Beaconsfield, Victoria)

The species is found in dry grassy native woodlands in:

  • Queensland,
  • New South Wales,
  • Victoria, and
  • South Australia.

    Philobota arabella
    drawing by Edward Newman and G.H. Ford, listed as Oecophora arabella    ,
    Characters of a few Australian Lepidoptera, Collected by Mr. Thomas R. Oxley,
    Transactions of the Entomological Society of London,
    New Series, Volume 3 (1856), Plate XVIII, fig. 4,
    image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

    The name Philobota arabella Group is applied to a set of related species in the genus Philobota which includes

  • Philobota acropola,
  • Philobota agnesella,
  • Philobota ancylotoxa,
  • Philobota arabella,
  • Philobota biophora,
  • Philobota chrysopotama,
  • Philobota euarmosta,
  • Philobota foedatella,
  • Philobota iphigenes,
  • Philobota lonchota,
  • Philobota melanoglypta,
  • Philobota melanthes,
  • Philobota metaxantha,
  • Philobota mucida,
  • Philobota paragypsa,
  • Philobota partitella,
  • Philobota perangusta,
  • Philobota perpetua,
  • Philobota placophaea,
  • Philobota pleurosticha,
  • Philobota scieropa,
  • Philobota silignias,
  • Philobota sophia,
  • Philobota strigatella,
  • Philobota susanae,
  • Philobota tanyscia,
  • Philobota transversella,
  • Philobota xanthopolia,
  • Philobota xanthoprepes,
  • Philobota xerodes,
  • Philobota xiperes,
  • Philobota xylochroa, and
  • Philobota zalias.
    •

    Further Reading:

    Ian F. B. Common,
    Oecophorine Genera of Australia II: The Chezala, Philobota and Eulechria groups (Lepidoptera: Oecophoridae),
    Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera Volume 5,
    CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 1997, pp. 262-264, 268, 277, 286.

    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. 48-49.

    Edward Newman,
    Characters of a few Australian Lepidoptera, Collected by Mr. Thomas R. Oxley,
    Transactions of the Entomological Society of London,
    New Series, Volume III, Number 8 (1856), p. 296, and also Plate 18, fig. 4.

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    (updated 1 November 2012, 4 December 2018)