Scirpophaga excerptalis
species of insect
Scirpophaga excerptalis, the white top borer or sugarcane top borer, is a moth in the family Crambidae. It was described by Francis Walker in 1863. It is found in southern Asia from the Indian subcontinent in the west to southern China in the east, south to New Guinea, possibly Australia and the Solomon Islands.
Description
The wingspan is 22–28 mm for males and 26–35 mm for females.
Similar species
Many, if not all, records of the moth Scirpophaga nivella in the cane fields of Asia are in fact of S. excerptalis. All species of Scirpophaga are indistinguishable from each other as caterpillars, very difficult to distinguish as females, and can best be distinguished by examining the male genitalia or by sequencing and comparing the DNA. Chen & Wu find the males resemble S. magnella the most in their key to the genitalia of the genus, with S. tongyaii slightly less similar, and S. khasis and S. adunctella less so. The females are also most similar to S. magnella, and less so to S. adunctella and S. flavidorsalis.
Distribution
It is found in China (including Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan), Taiwan, Japan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Peninsular Malaysia, Indonesia (including Java, Sumba Island, Timor, Buru, Adonara Island, Ambon Island and New Guinea), the Philippines, Papua New Guinea (including New Hannover, New Britain and New Ireland) and the Solomon Islands.
It is not native to Australia. According to Sallam (2003, 2006) it does not occur there and has a high chance of invading the country, however Chen & Wu (2014) include Australia in its distribution.
“Scirpophaga excerptalis” enters the record as species of insect. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Scirpophaga, excerptalis and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Scirpophaga excerptalis” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Scirpophaga, excerptalis and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14323299. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1863, 2003, 2006 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scirpophaga excerptalis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.