Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 21, 2026

Rice moth

The rice moth is a moth of the family Pyralidae. This small moth can become a significant pest. Its caterpillars feed on dry plantstuffs such as seeds, including cereals. Other recorded foods are flour and dried fruits.

Last revised
Jul 21, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
268 w
Citations
5
Source
Wikipedia ↗
Rice moth
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Clade: Pancrustacea
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Pyralidae
Genus: Corcyra
Species:
C. cephalonica
Binomial name
Corcyra cephalonica
(Stainton, 1866)
Synonyms

See text

The rice moth (Corcyra cephalonica) is a moth of the family Pyralidae. This small moth can become a significant pest. Its caterpillars feed on dry plantstuffs such as seeds, including cereals (e.g. rice). Other recorded1 foods are flour and dried fruits.

Synonyms

Other scientific names, now invalid, for the rice moth are:2

  • Anerastia lineata Legrand, 1965
  • Corcyra translineella Hampson, 1901
  • Melissoblaptes cephalonica Stainton, 1866
  • Melissoblaptes oeconomellus Mann, 1872
  • Tineopsis theobromae Dyar, 1913

When describing his T. theobromae in 1913, Dyar established the genus Tineopsis. He overlooked, however, that this had already been proposed by Cajetan Freiherr von Felder for a (presumed) arctiid moth in 1861. Nonwithstanding that Felder's species is somewhat dubious and has not been identified in recent lists, Dyar's Tineopsis is a junior homonym and thus invalid in any case.2

The species of the genus Corcyra have recently been considered members of the genus Aphomia by some researchers.34

See also

See also

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. Grabe (1942)
  2. See references in Savela (2009)
  3. Pohl, Greg; Patterson, Bob; Pelham, Jonathan (2016). Annotated taxonomic checklist of the Lepidoptera of North America, North of Mexico (Report). doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.2186.3287.
  4. Leraut, Patrice (2014). Moths of Europe Volume 4: Pyralids 2. NAP Editions. ISBN 978-2-913688-22-3.
References

References

  • Grabe, Albert (1942): Eigenartige Geschmacksrichtungen bei Kleinschmetterlingsraupen ["Strange tastes among micromoth caterpillars"]. Zeitschrift des Wiener Entomologen-Vereins 27: 105–109 [in German]. PDF fulltext
  • Savela, Markku (2009): Markku Savela's Lepidoptera and some other life forms – Corcyra. Version of 2009-APR-07. Retrieved 2010-APR-10.