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

The adult moth is red or dark brown. The wings each have a yellow margin, and there is also two sometimes vague yellow lines across each wing. The wingspan is about 2 cms. Its natural posture has the wings open but pushed downward, and the abdomen curled up.

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

The species has been found in Africa and Asia, including

and in Australia in

drawing by Harold Maxwell-Lefroy,
Indian Insect Life: a Manual of the Insects of the Plains, 1909, Plate LII, Fig. 6,
image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized by NCSU Libraries.

drawing by Boisduval, listed as Asopia mauritialis,
Faune Entomologique de Madagascar, Bourbon et Maurice. Lépidoptéres,
Paris : Jules Didot L'aine (1833), Plate 16, fig 8,
image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Further reading:

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Dechauffour de Boisduval,
Faune Entomologique de Madagascar, Bourbon et Maurice. Lépidoptéres,
Paris : Jules Didot L'aine (1833), p. 119.

Ian F.B. Common,
Moths of Australia,
Melbourne University Press, 1990, fig. 31.20, p. 349.

Stephen John Martin,
Occurrence of the Pyralid Moth Hypsopygia mauritialis (Lepidoptera, Pyralidae) in the nests of Vespa affinis (Hymenoptera: Vespidae),
Japanese Journal of Entomology,
Volume 60 (1992), pp. 267-270.

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(created 25 October 2012, updated 29 April 2024)