Agriophara leptosemela Lower, 1893 STENOMATINAE,   OECOPHORIDAE,   GELECHIOIDEA

Don Herbison-Evans, (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley

(Photo: courtesy of Donald Hobern, Aranda, Australian Capital Territory)

These Caterpillars feed on the green foliage of various trees in the family MYRTACEAE. The caterpillar makes silk shelter covered in frass between joind leaves.

It pupates in its shelter, which by then is composed of dead leaves. The pupa can make a rasping sound by bending, so rubbing pupal skin plates together. The hollow cavity between the dead leaves can seem to amplify this sound.

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

The adult moths have grey forewings, each with a broad dark streak outlined on one side by a cream line. The hindwings are pale grey. The wingspan is about 2 cms. When disturbed, they often run rather than fly.

The species has been found in:

Tasmania.

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Further reading :

Ian F.B. Common,  
Moths of Australia,
Melbourne University Press, 1990, fig. 23.17, p. 231.

Oswald B. Lower,
New Australian Lepidoptera,
Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia,
Volume 17 (1893), p. 174.

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. 53.

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(updated 20 April 2009, 10 January 2015, 31 October 2020)