| Pasture Tunnel Moth (one synonym : Oecophora griseicostella) Philobota laxeuta Group PHILOBOTA GROUP, OECOPHORINAE, OECOPHORIDAE, GELECHIOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
(Photo: courtesy of the
South Australian Research and Development Institute)
This Caterpillar is off-white with a dark brown head and thorax. It is long and thin, with a length of about 3 cms. It makes a vertical tunnel in the ground where it hides by day, and emerges at night to cut off leaves and drag them into its tunnel. It seems to prefer to feed on plants in POACEAE, including
The species is a pest because in large numbers the caterpillars are inclined to kill the plants they feed on.
The adult moths are shiny white, with the males having a variable fragmented dark streaks, including one along each forewing costa. The moths have a wingspan of about 2.5 cms.
The species occurs in
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. 266,267, 271, 272, 275, 393.
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. 50.
R.J. Roberts,
Timing and duration of the crepuscular flights and mating
of the pasture tunnel moth Philobota productella (Walk.)
(Lepidoptera : Oecophoridae),
Proceedings of the 3rd Australasian Conference on Grassland Invertebrate Ecology,
Adelaide, November 1981, pp. 57-62.
Francis Walker,
Catalogue of Lepidoptera Heterocera,
List of the Specimens of Lepidopterous Insects
in the Collection of the British Museum,
Part 29 (1864), p. 688.
Philipp Christoph Zeller,
Exotische Microlepidoptera,
Horae Societatis Entomologicae Rossicae,
Volume 13 (1877), p. 395.
 caterpillar |  butterflies |  Lepidoptera |  moths |  caterpillar |
(updated 17 May 2011, 20 October 2018, 17 November 2020)