''Omiodes blackburni'', the coconut leafroller, is a species of

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 w ...

in the family Crambidae. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to the Hawaiian islands of

Kauai Kauai, () anglicized as Kauai ( ), is geologically the second-oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (after Niʻihau). With an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), it is the fourth-largest of these islands and the 21st largest island ...

Oahu Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...

Molokai Molokai , or Molokai (), is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles (61 by 16 km) at its greatest length an ...

Maui The island of Maui (; Hawaiian: ) is the second-largest of the islands of the state of Hawaii at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2) and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which ...

Lanai Lanai ( haw, Lānai, , , also ,) is the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands and the smallest publicly accessible inhabited island in the chain. It is colloquially known as the Pineapple Island because of its past as an island-wide pineapple pl ...

and

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

. The species was first described by Arthur Gardiner Butler in 1877. Recorded food plants include '' Cocos nucifera'', but it occasionally also feeds on ''

Pritchardia The genus ''Pritchardia'' (family Arecaceae) consists of between 24 and 40 species of fan palms (subfamily Coryphoideae) found on tropical Pacific Ocean islands in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tuamotus, and most diversely in Hawaii. The generic name ho ...

'' (including ''

Pritchardia pacifica ''Pritchardia pacifica'', the Fiji fan palm, or piu, is a species of palm tree in the genus ''Pritchardia'' that is native to Tonga. It is also found on Fiji, Samoa, and the Marquesas however these populations are likely to be human introduction ...

''),

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguis ...

and introduced palms. Young larvae feed gregariously on the underside of the leaf of their host plant protected by a thin web of silk. At first they eat the substance of the leaf and leave the opposite epidermis. They soon scatter more or less, and make hiding places by fastening together the lower edges of coconut leaflets. Often several caterpillars can be found in the same place. As they become slightly larger, they eat the whole substance, eating from the edge, and not leaving the epidermis. When the leaflet is mostly eaten, they migrate to other leaflets. Larvae are full grown in about four weeks from hatching. Full-grown larvae are 32–35 mm long and dull greenish, with two dorsal whitish lines. Pupation takes place in a slight cocoon in the caterpillar's retreat. The

pupa A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their ...

is 15–19 mm long and light to dark brown according. The pupal period lasts 11–13 days.

External links

* *
Insects of Hawaii
* blackburni Moths described in 1877 Endemic moths of Hawaii {{Omiodes-stub