Lepidoptera unclassified IMMATURE moth

Hawker, ACT

Request use of media

Identification history

Lepidoptera unclassified IMMATURE moth	7 Jan 2020	GlennCocking
Unidentified	18 Aug 2019	MichaelMulvaney
Heterocera species	18 Aug 2019	donhe
Tortricinae (subfamily)	17 Aug 2019	MichaelMulvaney
Unidentified	26 Jan 2019	AlisonMilton

Identify this sighting

Please Login or Register to identify this sighting.

User's notes

This caterpillar curled itself into a leaf. A 'finished' cocoon was on the next branch (photo 5).

18 comments

RogerF wrote:

26 Jan 2019

Can you keep the cocoon to see what emerges please

AlisonMilton wrote:

27 Jan 2019

Okay, I'll go back up and collect one of them.

KimPullen wrote:

27 Jan 2019

Alison, I think this is a moth rather than a beetle. What is the host plant?

AlisonMilton wrote:

27 Jan 2019

The host plant was a young Eucalypt. I was thinking about the many Eucalypt beetles I've been finding. I'll collect a cocoon and see what hatches.

RogerF wrote:

27 Jan 2019

most eucalypt beetles pupate in the ground

donhe wrote:

18 Aug 2019

Many species in Oecophoridae and Crambidae, as well as Tortricidae, have caterpillars that live in rolled-leaf shelters. I can see little hope of even determining the family without getting a moth from it.

donhe wrote:

18 Aug 2019

Roger: are there Coleoptera larvae that roll leaves to form a shelter like this?

AlisonMilton wrote:

18 Aug 2019

Thanks. I didn't manage to get back for quite a while and when I did I couldn't find any rolled leaves. Maybe next season?

RogerF wrote:

18 Aug 2019

There are leaf rolling weevils in the family Attelabidae such as Euops spp. The most notable example being the giraffe weevil from Madagascar.

donhe wrote:

18 Aug 2019

I thought it was the adults of Euops and Trachelophorus weevils that rolled the leaves, not the larvae?
Alison's photos I think show the unknown larva rolling the leaf.

RogerF wrote:

18 Aug 2019

The female weevil rolls the leaf and lays an egg inside where the larva develops, as shown in Alision's photo. The image does not look like a weevil larva but is more likely a moth larva.

AlisonMilton wrote:

18 Aug 2019

In this case the larva actually curled the leaf as I watched. It didn't hatch in the leaf.

donhe wrote:

19 Aug 2019

The caterpillars of all the Australian butterfly species are well known, and this is not one of them, so it appears to be an undetermined moth species of one of the several suborders: Tortricoidea or Pyraloidea or Gelechioidea, which with other suborders of moths are loosely classed together as Heterocera.

GlennCocking wrote:

7 Jan 2020

Since the above discussion, we've created a place for unidentified immatures, so I've moved the record there. It's likely to be Tortricidae.

RogerF wrote:

8 Jan 2020

I don't want to labour the point, but most Tortricid larvae that I have seen in the field tie the terminal leaves of the host plant together with silk rather than roll them. Ian Common 1990 states "The larvae are concealed feeders in spun shoots or rolled, folded or conjoined living or dead leaves" but I could not find any examples of leaf rolling in the chapter on Tortricids.

AlisonMilton wrote:

8 Jan 2020

It's coming up to the time of year I found this larvae so will try to go back in a few days to see if they are present again this year, and if so, bring one home.

GlennCocking wrote:

8 Jan 2020

If there are a few there, we could think about watching them till we can collect a pupa.

AlisonMilton wrote:

8 Jan 2020

Thanks Glenn, I'll let you know.

Please Login or Register to comment.