Eastern Pale Rain Moth
Male, profile
Ellura
Eastern Pale Rain Moth
Male, anterior
 
                      
Eastern Pale Rain Moth (Abantiades tembyi)Class: Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta)
Order: Butterflies & Moths (Lepidoptera)
Family: Swift Moth (:Hepialoidea Hepialidae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Eastern Pale Rain Moth (Abantiades tembyi)
This Photo:     🔍Male, Hindwing🔎
Synonym: Trictena

Thank you Ethan Beaver for identifying this species for us

General Species Information:
Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere
1st Live Photo on-line:
Very large moth ~55m long, with a wingspan of ~115mm
Dark grey with light grey lightening pattern on the wings
After discovering the horn on the Forked Grass moth recently, we wanted to clearly show the projections out the front of this species were in fact part of the palps, and not an additional appendage.
Ethan told us "tembyi" is in honour of Nick Temby who collected several critical specimens out near Ceduna.
The pupal case is not necessarily the same species as the moth; but this is the only Abantiades we've found on Ellura and Ethan says they are very specific about where they live.
The second specimen we just loaded was considerably smaller than the first. The new one was ~50mm tip to tail with a wingspan of ~90mm.

Copyright © 2021-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 02-May-2021
This species is an Australian Native Species, not listed in the SA Murray Mallee Survey of 2010.