They make a shelter by rolling leaves of the foodplant into a tube, in which they live by day. They emerge to feed at night.

(Photo: courtesy of Wes Jenkinson)

They pupate in their shelter. The pupa has a length of about 2 cms.

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

The adults are dark brown on top with large pale yellow spots on the forewings. The males have two such spots and also have a black line in the middle of each forewing. The females have three spots and no black line. Underneath, the wings are similar except that both sexes has two black spots under each hindwing. The butterflies have a wingspan of about 3 cms.

The eggs are white and laid singly on the underside of leaves of a foodplant.

This species occurs in: and

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 1, pp. 158-159.

Oswald B. Lower,
Revision of the Australian Hesperiadae,
Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia,
Volume 35 (1911), pp. 129-130, No. 29.

previous caterpillar

Australian butterflies

Australian Lepidoptera

Australian moths

next caterpillar

(updated 15 June 2009, 5 January 2024)