close-up of head
(Photo: courtesy of Scott Gavins, Fraser Coast, Queensland)

The caterpillars grow to a length of about 4 cms.

(Photo: courtesy of Scott Gavins, Fraser Coast, Queensland)

The caterpillars pupate in a cocoon in the ground litter. Adult moths emerge after about 14 days in summer in Bundaberg.

(Photo: courtesy of Evan Harris, Ipswich, Queensland)

The adult moths are black with a ragged white bar across each forewing, and black and white chequering around the wing edges. The undersides of the wings are plain black. The thorax is covered in orange hairs. The moths have a wingspan of about 4 cms.

drawing by Felder & Rogenhofer, listed as Leucanitis schraderi,
Reise der Osterreichischen Fregatte Novara,
Band 2, Abtheilung 2 (5) (1875), Plate CXVI, fig. 7,
image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

The species is found in

and in the northern half of Australia including

(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

Further reading :

Arthur G. Butler,
On a collection of Lepidoptera Heterocera from Marlborough Province, New Zealand,
Cistula Entomologica,
Volume 1 (1874), p. 293.

Ian F.B. Common,
Moths of Australia,
Melbourne University Press, 1990, pl. 21.9, p. 453.

Rudolf Felder & Alois F. Rogenhofer,
Zoologischer Theil: Lepidoptera,
Reise der Osterreichischen Fregatte Novara,
Band 2, Abtheilung 2 (5) (1875), p. 13, and also Plate 116, fig. 7.

George Francis Hampson,
Catalogue of Noctuidae in the British Museum,
Catalogue of Lepidoptera Phalaenae in the British Museum,
Volume 12 (1913), p. 560, No. 7693, and also Plate 219, fig. 11.

Buck Richardson,
Tropical Queensland Wildlife from Dusk to Dawn Science and Art,
LeapFrogOz, Kuranda, 2015, p. 129.

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(updated 9 August 2011, 25 January 2019, 6 April 2022)