#cossid

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.

A Wood Moth, probably Endoxyla. The Cossid moths eat wood when they're caterpillars, with some species taking 3 years to reach maturity. The famous Witchetty Grub, popular bush food, is a cossid caterpillar.

One Australian cossid lays a record-breaking number of eggs - almost 30,000 in one case.