S11: Female, hindwings
S8: Female, dorsal
|Class:||Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta)|
|Order:||Butterflies & Moths (Lepidoptera)|
|Family:||Tiger Moth (:Noctuoidea Erebidae)|
|Species:||Senecio Moth (Nyctemera amicus)|
|This Photo:||S11: Female, Abdomen, dorsal|
Thank you Don Herbison-Evans for identifying this species for us
General Species Information:
Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA), the Adelaide Hills and elsewhere
Mature larvae (shown here) are about 13mm long, generally black with 3 orange longitudinal stripes. Young instars are black & white with no orange stripe, nor tufts (but still hairy). Intermediate instars have black & orange with areas of white patches which confuse the overall pattern. They are very hairy with 2 tufts of hair at the front which look like antennae or horns. You can see the hairs also have barbs/hairs on them. They feed on various varieties of senecio (hence their species common name)
A day flying moth, the adult wings are mainly black with white blotches making a diagonal, thick line on the wings. Their bodies are orange & black horizontally striped (leading to the "tiger moth" common name of the family). They have orange highlights behind the head and on the wing tips (cilia).
Male & female adults can be differentiated by their antennae. While both are bipectinate (2 rows of filaments), the male pectinations (filaments) are longer and more spread than the females; as shown in the photo's.
Females have a wingspan of about 44mm, and are around 15mm long. We haven't measured a male as yet.
We have seen adults in April, May, June, August & November.