Hasora chromus

Hasora chromus (Cramer, [1780])
Common Banded Awl
COELIADINAE , HESPERIIDAE

Don Herbison-Evans ( donherbisonevans@yahoo.com )
&
Stella Crossley

(updated 4 April 2009)

Hasora chromus
(Photo: courtesy of Wes Jenkinson)

These Caterpillars are brown with short sparse hairs, although the colour can vary to pinkish or greenish. They have a dark dorsal line, and yellow dorsolateral and lateral lines. The head is dark brown. The young Caterpillars feed on young soft leaves, but later instars consume the harder older leaves of their foodplant :

Millettia ( Pongamia glabra ), and

Pongam ( Pongamia pinnata ),

both of FABACEAE. The Caterpillars live in a shelter made from a folded leaf joined with silk. They feed both by day and at night.

(Photo: courtesy of Wes Jenkinson)

They pupate in their shelter.

(Picture: courtesy of CSIRO Entomology)

The adult butterflies of this species are basically brown. The males have a black line across part of each forewing, and the females have two transparent spots on each forewing.

(Photo: courtesy of Graeme Cocks, Townsville)

Both sexes have a white band across the underside of each hindwing ending in a fuzzy dark spot at the tornus. Both sexes have a wingspan of about 4 cms.

The species occurs in south-east Asia across to the south Pacific, including:

India

Japan,

New Guinea,

Taiwan,
and in Australia in

New South Wales,

Northern Territory, and

Queensland.