Animal Species:Favoured Footman Termessa gratiosa (Walker, 1865)

Alternative Name/s

Lichen moth

Identification

Fore wings with a cream background, sometimes tinged with yellow, the broad basal black fascia with a pale centre, head with whitish scales. Can be distinguished from the similar T. diplographa by the white ground colour in the forewings and from T. zonophanes by the absence of black scaling near the tip of the abdomen.

DISCLAIMER: The identifications presented on these pages should be taken as indicative only. As with many groups of Australian insects there has been no formal revision of the Lithosiinae in recent years, and there are many undescribed species present in collections. Many species are superficially similar, and require a specialist to separate them.

Similar Species

T. diplographa, T. zonophanes

Distribution

From SE Queensland to Victoria

Distribution by collection data

Biomaps map of Termessa gratiosa specimens from the Australian Museum database

What does this mean?

Habitat

Forested and heath regions

Seasonality

September to January

Life history modes

terrestrial, volant

What does this mean?

Classification

Species:

gratiosa

Genus:

Termessa

Subfamily:

Lithosiinae

Family:

Arctiidae

Superfamily:

Noctuoidea

Order:

Lepidoptera

Class:

Insecta

Phylum:

Arthropoda

Kingdom:

Animalia

What does this mean?

Further Reading

The majority of images of Lithosiinae presented on these pages were taken from specimens housed in the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC) (CSIRO, Canberra). I would like to thank the staff and researchers at ANIC for their generous assistance in providing me access to this collection, and I acknowledge the depth of effort and the investment of staff time that has gone into building and curating this splendid resource. In particular, I would like to thank Ted Edwards and Marianne Horak for their assistance.

Dr Dave Britton , Collection Manager, Entomology
Last Updated: 2 October 2009