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Project Noah Nature School
Thallarcha staurocola
A small moth about 10 or 12 mm long. It was mostly white with two black wavy bands across the wings, one narrow and the other broad. The white submarginal area was broken by black patches. The basal part of the costa was dark followed by a pale yellow section. The hind wings could have been yellow. This moth looked slightly damaged and had probably lost some scales.
Spotted on a wall near a sports field.
The moth was resting high up on the wall and was difficult to photograph. It looked like a Footman moth, like Thallarcha albicollis http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/697... but had some distinct differences. Heaps of thanks to bayucca for the ID and great references. http://morwellnp.pangaean.net/cgi-bin/sh... http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/showima... Family: Arctiidae Subfamily: Lithossinae
Thanks, Leuba, my friend ;-)... Always a pleasure and leisure, (OK, not always so easy for me to ID downunders), to help with an ID. Apropos downunder: my partner in the orchestra is a nice lady violinist from New Zealand, at least for 4 days exercising and concert... so, busy time and probably not much time for IDing...
:-) Leuba my friend :-) beautiful one,congrats and thanks for sharing your allways so interesting spottings with us
Thank you Thank you, bayucca my friend ( as Antonio Ginja Ginja would say) !! we've got a book on Arctiidae and we still couldn't find it..you are absolutely right with the distinguishing features !
Erebidae, Arctiinae, Lithosiini, Thallarcha sp. and must be Thallarcha staurocola. Note the brown stripe at the margin as a key criteria to separate it from Albicollis. And there is in addition a yellow band at the outside, which is present in yours as well, but only a faint one.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/showima...
http://morwellnp.pangaean.net/cgi-bin/sh...
Spotted on Jan 6, 2014
Submitted on Jan 9, 2014
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