#endoxyla

[onenicebugperday]

@mother-entropy​ submitted: this beautiful friend was found by a buddy of mine in Sydney, Australia and he asked me to forward the pics to you for identification!

A beautiful friend indeed! Looks like a miller moth in the family Cossidae, most likely in the genus Endoxyla. Some of the species can be very hard to tell apart without a closer look or sometimes even dissection, but I would guess probably either Endoxyla lituratus or Endoxyla encalypti, which as far as I know don’t have common names in English. The caterpillars of miller moths are tree borers and look like big grubs :)

[drhoz]

#1287 - Endoxlya secta

AKA Xyleutes diaplecta 

  Spotted by Stephen Timms at Mt Coot-tha, near Brisbane. One of the smaller Cossid Moths, and native to Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.   

[drhoz]

#1384 - Endoxyla sp - Cossid Caterpillar

Found by Lynette Meertens, in Goulburn, on the South Tablelands of New South Wales. 

Endoxyla caterpillars live in tunnels they bore into wood, or in underground tunnels and feed on the sap, for up to three years before emerging as very large moths that don’t feed at all. One of the species, E. leucomochla, is the famous Witchetty Grub of native cuisine.

[drhoz]

#3101 - Endoxyla edwardsorum

Formerly Cossus edwardsi.

A woodboring moth recorded from most Australian states and territories.

Great Southern BioBlitz 2024, Wongan Hills - Christmas Rock

[drhoz]

#560 - Catoxophylla cyanuages - Giant Flightless Cossid Moth

photo by lab_jazz

This is a really interesting one. Lyn sent me the photo after their road-trip to the remote and tiny country town of Mullewa. While they were wandering around photographing the wildflowers, they spotted this huge moth on a tree trunk.

I posted it on BowerBird, and some of us agreed it appeared to be an Endoxyla, but the tiny wings were a puzzle. As far as I knew, female Endoxylas are perfectly capable of flight, and there was no way this one was getting off the ground without a helicopter. Perhaps she was still inflating them? In which case still being out in daylight was suicidal.

But Ken Walker identified it as something much rarer and interesting.

The genus Catoxophylla has only one species - "cyanuages". In this species, the male has functional wings while the females wings are non-functional. It is found in Australia, where it has been recorded from Western Australia.

This is a wonderful find and image. I just checked Google images and there are no live images for this species on the web. Yours will be the first!!! Congratulations.

So much kudos to Lyn for spotting and photographing it :)

[drhoz]

#491 - Woodboring Moth

A large Cossid moth, of the genus Endoxyla (formerly Xyleutes). These are what witchetty grubs grow into.

This one, sent to me by Wolphin, seems to be very close to E. mackeri. He found it up in Murchison, a WA shire that contains a few cattle stations, just over a 100 people, and a gigantic radio telescope array.