Leucania obumbrata
Encyclopedia
Leucania obumbrata is a moth
Moth
A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the Noctuidae
Noctuidae
The Noctuidae or owlet moths are a family of robustly-built moths that includes more than 35,000 known species out of possibly 100,000 total, in more than 4,200 genera. They constitute the largest family in the Lepidoptera....

 family. It is known from Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

The wingspan
Wingspan
The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is about 50 mm. Adults have dark brown forewings with a fine-grained pattern. The hindwings are pale, darkening toward the margin, with dark brown veins.

The larvae are fawn and grow to a length of about 40 mm.

Adults are preyed on by Ordgarius magnificus
Ordgarius magnificus
Ordgarius magnificus, the Magnificent spider, is a bolas spider in the family Araneidae. It is endemic to forests along the Australian east coast.-Description:Females are up to 14mm long and almost as wide; males reach only 2mm...

. The spider emits a pheromone similar to that of the female to attract males, trapping them in a sticky ball of glue which the spider swings on a stretch of silk.

Taxonomy

The Checklist of Australian Lepidoptera synonymised Dasygaster nephelistis with Leucania obumbrata, but made no attempt to assign the species to a genus.
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