Sugarcane Bud Moth HIEROXESTINAE, TINEIDAE, TINEOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
(Photo: courtesy of the
Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, Bundaberg)
This Caterpillar is a pest, particularly of:
The caterpillar is buff coloured, with a dark brown head, dark spots along the sides, and is sparsely covered in hairs. Normally it lives in a tunnel bored in a shoot or root of the foodplant. It grows to a length of about 1.5 cms.
It pupates in a cocoon in its tunnel.
The adult moth has a purple head and thorax, and yellow forewings with purple wingtips. The hindwings are yellow. The moth has a wingspan of about 2 cms.
It occurs in the north of Australia, including
Further reading :
J.R. Agnew (ed.),
Australian Sugarcane Pests,
Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations,
Indooroopilly: 1997, p. 45.
Edward Meyrick,
A new Opogona attached to sugar-cane,
Entomologist's Monthly Magazine,
Series 3, Volume 1 (1915), p. 291.
Gaden S. Robinson & Ebbe S. Nielsen,
Tineid Genera of Australia,
Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera Volume 2,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 1993.
caterpillar | butterflies | Lepidoptera | moths | caterpillar |
(updated 15 September 2012, 14 August 2019, 7 November 2020, 31 August 2021)