Always Eating.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 935, 4 December 1933, Page 8

Always Eating.

Nal ure Notes.

By

James Drummond,

F.L.S., F.Z.S.

pASE-MAKING CATERPILLARS of a clothes moth. Tinea pellionella, are establishing themselves in New Zealand, making their homes in wardrobes and ruining woollen garments and other articles of clothing. In the usual secretive way, the species has come to this Dominion with trade, probably from the Old Country. Wherever its original country may be, it has distributed itself widely over the civilised world, eating its way through woollens, tweeds, rugs and valuable furs. Its success is attributed to adults and young loving darkness rather than light and keeping well out of view, to ample and easy supplies of food, and to the female’s capacity to lay eggs. A single female may lay 100 eggs or more at one time. In warm weather a baby caterpillar may emerge from an egg after a few days. Cold weather retards incubation, which may extend to three weeks. In any case, a caterpillar is no sooner liberated from its prison than it begins to eat cloth with an appetite to match a splendid digestion. Nature has atcned for this by cutting off appetite as soon as the caterpillar stage is passed. The adult moths, samples of fragility, never eat. All damage laid at the insect’s door is done by the caterpillars. They eat and eat and never have enough. While this species is not a New Zealander, the family to which it belongs, the Tineidae, is represented in the Dominion’s native insect life. This might be expected in view of the fact that the number of known species in the family is estimated at not less than 4000. The United Kingdom alone has about 700. New Zealand’s total is given by Dr R. J. Tillyard as 97, Australia’s as 394. Mr G. V. Hudson estimates that the family constitutes more than a third of the whole order of moths and butterflies in any region, and that probably there is the same proportion in New Zealand. Caterpillars of most of the native species in the family have hearty but normal appetites, living on plants.