lining its boreholes with a silk tube which projects from the tunnel and has a silk cap.

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

The adult moth is has dark brown forewings with about 20 large overlapping pale yellow spots. The hindwings are plain dark brown. The moth has a fuzzy orange head with a black collar, and a fuzzy orange thorax. It has a wingspan of about 2.5 cms.

The species is found all over eastern Australia, including:

underside
(Photo: courtesy of Kristi Ellingsen and Judy Brown, Tasmania)

Further reading :

Ian F.B. Common,
Moths of Australia,
Melbourne University Press, 1990, pl. 3.6, p. 184.

Edward Donovan,
General Illustration of Entomology,
An Epitome of the Natural History of the Insects of New Holland, New Zealand, New Guinea, Otaheite and other Islands in the Indian, Southern and Pacific Oceans,
London (1803), Part 1, p. 180, and also Plate on p. 178.

Graham McDonald,
Weird and Wonderful Moths,
Metamorphosis Australia,
Issue 78 (September 2015), pp. 11-15, fig. 1,
Butterflies and Other Invertebrates Club.

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. 7, 44.

Buck Richardson,
Tropical Queensland Wildlife from Dusk to Dawn Science and Art,
LeapFrogOz, Kuranda, 2015, p. 211.

Gaden S. Robinson & Ebbe S. Nielsen,
Tineid Genera of Australia,
Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera Volume 2,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 1993, pp. ix, x, 10, 246-252, 263, 279.

Paul Zborowski and Ted Edwards,
A Guide to Australian Moths,
CSIRO Publishing, 2007, p. 51.

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(updated 25 October 2010, 9 February 2018, 14 August 2019, 3 December 2020)