and so are a pest in Eucalyptus plantations .

The caterpillars feed on the surface of leaves, and live in a shelter of curled leaves held together with silk. The caterpillars become darker as they mature, and turn pink in their last instar.

pupae: female above, male below
(Photo: courtesy of N. Mauchline, T.W. Withers, and M.J. Nuttall, SCION, New Zealand Farm Forestry Association)

They pupate under bark or in a curled leaf or in ground debris. The female pupa appears to have one less abdominal segment than the male.

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

The adult moth has brown stippled forewings. The female sometimes has a broad pale wavy area along the hind margin of each forewing. The male sometimes has a broad pale wavy area along the costa of each forewing. The hindwings are pale brown with dark veins. The wingspan is about 1.5 cms.

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

The species has been found in:

as well as in Australia in

Further reading :

Marianne Horak and Furumi Komai,
Olethreutine Moths of Australia: (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae),
Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera Series, Volume 10,
CSIRO Publishing, 2006.

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. 65.

Edward Meyrick,
Descriptions of Australian Micro-lepidoptera VI: Tortricina,
Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales,
Series 1, Volume 6, Part 3 (1881), p. 683, No. 3.

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(updated 2 June 2011, 16 October 2015, 23 June 2019, 15 August 2020, 21 April 2022)