Rainbow Battleship Caterpillar mystery solved!

Until recently, the rainbow battleship caterpillar (Limacodidae) has been thought to be the caterpillar of Calcarifera ordinata although it had never been reared through to adult. During the 2019 ESQ BugCatch to Aroona Station, Jessa Thurman collected one of these colourful caterpillars and gave it to Andrew Walker at UQ for his venom studies. Subsequently, it was also used for DNA barcoding where they discovered its true identity: Comana albibasis. Jessa, Andrew and Lyn Cook have recently published a paper in Austral Entomology with all the details. Check it out! Photo credit: Andrew Maynard.