Tiger Moth for ID please.

[Painted Jezebel]

Found this beauty yesterday. Tried to find ID on the web but failed miserably!

[hkmoths]

Hi Les,

Try looking under Noctuidae, Agaristinae (Forester Moths). This group in the past has also been given family rank status.

cheers,

Roger.

[Painted Jezebel]

Thanks Roger. I had been looking under the Arctiidae!

I believe it is Episteme maculatrix.

[atronox]

I must be looking at very old publications coz i haf long thought that agaristiidae was a separate family.

[hkmoths]

Hi Aaron, yes the agaristines were considered a separate family once upon a long time ago.

If the Moths of Thailand vol 3 (Noctuidae, part 1) (Kononenko & Pinratana, 2005) is anything to go by, the closest I can match it to is Episteme vetula (plate 40, no 8). It is not E. maculatrix, with has only one prominent broad band (submarginal) on the forewing, not the two narrower bands of this specimen in the photo.

The range of E. vetula fits - K&P give on p.140 "Thailand, Vietnam, North India, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Philippines" - though with this range it must surely be in Singapore and peninsular Malaysia as well.

cheers, Roger.

[Painted Jezebel]

Sorry, but I got the ID from John Moores' Thaibugs website. Not E. maculatrix then. It looked OK to me! But then, what do I know about moths! I think I had better change my file names.