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.

cocoon and pupa
(Photo: courtesy of the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, Bundaberg)

It pupates in a cocoon in its tunnel.

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

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.

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

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.

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(updated 15 September 2012, 18 January 2025)