''Chilo auricilius'', the gold-fringed rice stemborer or terai borer, is a

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of ...

in the family

Crambidae The Crambidae are the grass moth family of lepidopterans. They are variable in appearance, the nominal subfamily Crambinae (grass moths) taking up closely folded postures on grass stems where they are inconspicuous, while other subfamilies includ ...

. It was described by Gerald C. Dudgeon in 1905. It is found in

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northe ...

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountai ...

and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, as well as on Sulawesi,

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java Isl ...

Sangir Island Sangir Besar, commonly called Sangir Island (with the spelling variants "Sangihe", "Sanghir" or "Sangi"), is an island in the Sangir Islands group. Its Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic countr ...

and the

Moluccas The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...

. The larvae bore into and feed on the stems of various

grass family Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns and ...

plants including sugarcane,

rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly '' Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and ''Porteresia'', both wild and domestica ...

and

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn ( North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. ...

Description

The forewings of the adult are rather variable, being yellowish or brownish with silvery dots, either scattered or arranged in two transverse bands. The fringe round the margin of the wings is golden yellow. The forewing length is and the width . The hindwings are pale brown.

Host plants

The larvae feed on several members of the grass family Poaceae; these include

(''Oryza sativa''), sugarcane (''Saccharum officinarum''),

sorghum ''Sorghum'' () is a genus of about 25 species of flowering plants in the grass family ( Poaceae). Some of these species are grown as cereals for human consumption and some in pastures for animals. One species is grown for grain, while many ot ...

(''

Sorghum bicolor ''Sorghum bicolor'', commonly called sorghum () and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a grass species cultivated for its grain, which is used for food for humans, animal feed, and ethanol produ ...

'') and

(''Zea mays''). On young sugarcane, the larvae kill the leaves and cause the shoots to die. In older cane there may be no noticeable symptoms until the leaf sheaths are stripped off, when the gallery entrances become apparent. On rice, the symptoms are similar to those caused by other stem borers, with death of the central tissue and failure of the flowerhead to develop properly, with the emerging panicles whitish and empty.

Control

A naturally occurring parasitoid

fly Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced m ...

, ''

Sturmiopsis inferens ''Sturmiopsis inferens'' is a species of fly in the family Tachinidae. It is native to Asia and is a parasitoid of various moth species whose larvae feed inside the stems of sugarcane, rice and other large grasses, including the Gurdaspur bor ...

'', has been used to control this stem borer. It can be raised in the laboratory and released where needed. It has been found that the fly is active for most of the year; from March to June it mainly targets the sugarcane shoot borer (''Chilo infuscatellus'') and the pink borer (''Sesamia inferens''). Subsequently, from July to October, it targets the Gurdaspur borer (''Bissetia steniellus''), and between November and January, it mainly attacks the gold-fringed rice stemborer.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q18087114 Chiloini Moths described in 1905 Insect pests of millets