Yellow Peach Moth (one synonym : Botys nicippealis Walker, 1859) SPILOMELINAE, CRAMBIDAE, PYRALOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
This Caterpillar is buff coloured, and the final instar has pairs of dorsal brown warts on each segment. Its habit of feeding on fruit and other crops makes it an agricultural pest. The specimen pictured above was found in an ear of
Other foodplants reported are:
The caterpillar lives concealed on its foodplant in a case lined with silk. It grows to a length of about 2 cms.
The adult is yellow, with a dark pattern. The moth has a wingspan of about 3 cms. Its pheromones have been investigated. The males also emit powerful ultrasonic sounds (around 82KHz) in the courtship process to induce a female to adopt the mating posture.
The species is a pest on fruit trees and other crops over much of Asia, for example :
as well as in Australia in:
Control of the pest has been investigated using:
Further reading :
Ian F.B. Common,
Moths of Australia,
Melbourne University Press, 1990, pl. 9.17, pp. 66, 355.
Achille Guenée,
Deltoïdes et Pyralites,
in Boisduval & Guenée :
Histoire naturelle des insectes; spécies général des lépidoptères,
Volume 9, Part 8 (1854), p. 320, No. 347.
Ryo Nakano, Takuma Takanashi, Fumio Ihara, Koji Mishiro, Masatoshi Toyama, & Yukio Ishikawa,
Ultrasonic courtship song of the yellow peach moth, Conogethes punctiferalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae),
Applied Entomology and Zoology,
Volume 47, Issue 2 (May 2012), pp. 87-93.
Paul Zborowski and Ted Edwards,
A Guide to Australian Moths,
CSIRO Publishing, 2007, p. 133.
caterpillar | butterflies | Lepidoptera | moths | caterpillar |
(updated 4 November 2010, 27 January 2013, 7 May 2019)