Diagnosis. This is a more uniformly pale straw species than leucanioides and much smaller, the forewings grading browner narrowly at the distal margin and having a faint brownish discal mark. More strongly marked specimens have a curved, pale postmedial, edged brown on each side, that runs parallel to a diffuse brown medial fascia extending posteriorly and basad from the discal mark.
Habitat preference. The species is a pest of rice in Borneo and elsewhere, but has also been taken in disturbed areas of coastal forest, swamp forest and lowland dipterocarp forest in Brunei, and at about 600m at Poring in Sabah.
Biology. The larva is known as the green hairy caterpillar of rice (Oryza; Gramineae) in the Philippines (Sunio et al., 1983). The round greenish eggs are laid singly but arranged in loose rows on both sides of a leaf, usually near the tip. The fully grown larva is 16mm long, cylindrical, tapering slightly at each end, green, with primary setae typical of the genus.
