Tufted Wood Moth
S2, Profile
Tufted Wood Moth
S5, Profile
| Tufted Wood Moth S2, Profile | | Tufted Wood Moth S5, Profile | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | |||
| Order: | Butterflies & Moths (Lepidoptera) | ||||
| Family: | Wood Moth (:Cossoidea Cossidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Tufted Wood Moth (Archaeoses pentasema) | ||||
| This Photo: | S3, Profile | ||||
| Other name: | Tufted Goat Moth | ||||
Thank you Prof Victor W Fazio III† & Leon Crang for confirming and Don Herbison-Evans & Peter Marriott for helping with the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere A most unusual species, ~20mm long. While it seemed this was a northern species we have now shown it exists in the south; along with A. polygrapha. We had 4 specimens come to a night light over a couple of days. We asked Don Herbison-Evans for his thoughts and he agrees it looks more like A. pentasema than A. polygrapha. He then gave us some reading to do from the original descriptions by Lower. It was hard going and to be honest the only diagnostic we felt we could be truly certain of as a reliable difference was the antennae "base beneath sharply white". You can see this on both ventral & anterior photo's. The abdomen is generally darker with this one as well. Surprisingly the ventral abdomenal black stripe wasn't mentioned anywhere. Peter Marriott (who heads up the "Moths of Victoria" team and has helped us in the past), saw this page and kindly told us that they have records of A. pentasema in North Western Victoria. We share a lot of species with North Western Victoria; suddenly it's not such a surprise to have them at Ellura now Peter also showed us 3 specimens collected there and ours match up beautifully with those Further Peter let us know they feed on Myoporum, common trees on Ellura. | |||||
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