Flour moth

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Flour moth
Flour moth (Ephestia kuehniella), preparation

Flour moth ( Ephestia kuehniella ), preparation

Systematics
Class : Insects (Insecta)
Order : Butterflies (Lepidoptera)
Family : European borer (Pyralidae)
Subfamily : Phycitinae
Genre : Ephestia
Type : Flour moth
Scientific name
Ephestia kuehniella
Zeller , 1879
Flour moth with closed wings

The flour moth ( Ephestia kuehniella ) is a butterfly from the family of the common borer (Pyralidae). The species is a common storage pest .

features

The flour moth has a wingspan of 20 to 25 millimeters and a body length of 10 to 14 millimeters. The front wings are slightly convex to the outside, with a right-angled outer edge. They are colored lead gray and usually have two light, jagged transverse lines lined with dark scales and a few smaller black spots and a row of small, dark spots on the front edge. The color is very variable. The significantly wider rear wings are strikingly lighter in color, white on the upper side with a gray border line, in front of which a wide, light fringed scale band adjoins, on the underside light silver-gray. The body is almost monochrome, the same shade of gray as the fore wings. The thread-like antennae and the proboscis are also scaled gray. As with all related species, the labial palps are directed upwards, lying close to the head. The abdomen is somewhat lighter, in the male with a protruding, whitish tuft of scales on the rear edge.

The species is significantly larger than any other related species that are stored as pests.

Caterpillars

Caterpillar

The caterpillars are whitish in color in all stages with a darker head, a dark pronotum and small dark spots on the other segments, which are small sclerites surrounding the base of the hair and the stigmas . Older caterpillars of the reservoir species can be identified with an American key. From the cocoa moth ( Ephestia elutella ) the caterpillar is distinguishable on the size of the stigma of the eighth abdominal segment. In the flour moth, this is about the same size as the closest dark ring-shaped sclerite (around the bristle "SD1"), in the cocoa moth it is significantly smaller. In the dried fruit moth ( Plodia interpunctella ), the ring sclerites of the first eight abdominal segments that accompany the bristles are all brightly colored.

Life cycle

The species has six caterpillar stages. The first stage of caterpillars hatches from the laid eggs after approx. 96 hours (at 30 ° C). The first larva reaches less than a millimeter in length. The sixth instar larvae mature to pupation and reach a length of 11 to 13 millimeters and a weight of a little less than 30 milligrams. It takes about 41 days (at 30 ° C) for this; for the development from the egg to the new imago 50 days. The larva pupates in a self-made pupa-quiver, which is camouflaged with foreign material, mostly outside the food substrate. The pupa is initially greenish in color, later it turns reddish brown on the upper side of the trunk. It is about 9 millimeters long. The hatched moths are quickly ready to mate. The females can lay eggs without having to have consumed food beforehand - a major advantage for a stored product pest. The moths are predominantly nocturnal. The females are ready to lay in the second night following hatching. The species develops normally three, in very warm buildings four generations a year in Europe. It does not enter a diapause at temperatures above 25 ° C. Adults are mainly found in summer (July to October).

Way of life

The caterpillar feeds mainly on flour and needs neither water nor other food sources for successful development. It can also be applied to intact cereal kernels (especially corn kernels), processed flour products such as pasta and other vegetable substances such as B. dry vegetables and vegetable products (including cherimoya , pigeon pea , star apple , mango ). The cocoa moth, which is related to vegetables and fruits, is much more common. The larvae spin filaments in all movements and usually live in loosely joined webs. These can cause great damage when machine processing flour.

In the household, once it gets into a pantry, all preferred foods are contaminated in a very short time. They can penetrate a storage jar through the thread of loosely seated lids, bite through thin packaging and crawl up to 400 meters.

Combat

The most common traditional control method in storage warehouses and processing plants was fumigation with methyl bromide , the use of which has been increasingly restricted with the legal force of the Montreal Protocol . Sulfuryl fluoride is often used as a substitute . In addition, common insecticides such as pyrethroids and phosphoric acid esters are used. However, these are subject to usage restrictions when they come into contact with food and are not very popular with consumers. That is why there are increasing efforts to find alternative methods. For example, the synthetic pheromone ( Z , E ) -9,12-tetradecadienyl acetate (TDA), which attracts males, is used, but so far not with resounding success. Numerous plant extracts and essential oils have also been tested experimentally.

For a long time have parasitoid parasitic wasps attention found as potential antagonists of flour moth. The "flour moth parasitic wasp" Venturia canescens has been investigated in this regard since the 1920s and also parasitizes other caterpillars that are harmful to supplies. The brackish wasp Habrobracon hebetor also parasitizes flour moth caterpillars, albeit less frequently.

In the household, refrigerating suspicious supplies to below 10 ° C is recommended to stop development. Caterpillars can be killed by freezing, but also by heating the supplies to 60 ° C for more than 20 minutes. Commercially available pheromone traps are used to determine the infestation, but these are not particularly effective in terms of control. An essential control strategy in the household is to courageously throw away infected and suspicious supplies.

Contaminated food should be disposed of immediately as it can lead to health problems such as allergies and gastrointestinal diseases. Food that is infected usually has thread-like webs and grains that stick together.

prevention

In the household, an infestation can be largely prevented by storing grain and grain products in tightly closed containers such as food jars.

Taxonomy

Philipp Christoph Zeller named the species in honor of Julius Kühn , from whom he had received the material. The animals came from a mill in Halle "which grinds a lot of American wheat". The species is classified in the subgenus Anagasta Heinrich, 1956. The genus Ephestia comprises 14 species worldwide, of which in Central Europe, in addition to the household pests flour moth and cocoa moth, only three species are expected in the wild.

distribution

The species has been introduced worldwide by humans. In Central Europe it never occurs outdoors, but only in buildings. A new infection is not caused by flying moths, but by infected stocks. North and Central America are given as the original home of the species. But this is controversial; other editors assume an original home in the Mediterranean region and / or Turkey instead.

swell

Web links

Commons : Flour Moth  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David J. Carter: Pest Lepidoptera of Europe: With Special Reference to the British Isles. Series Entomologica, Vol. 31. Springer Verlag, 1984, ISBN 978-90-6193-504-9
  2. ↑ a b M. Alma Solis: Key To Selected Pyraloidea (Lepidoptera) Larvae Intercepted At US Ports Of Entry by Weisman 1986, updated 2006. 2006 ( download )
  3. ↑ Jin Xu: Reproductive behavior of Ephestia kuehniella Zeller (Lepidoptera, Pyralidae). Thesis, Massey University, Almerston North, New Zealand 2010.
  4. ↑ Camilla Ryne, Mats Ekeberg, P.-O. Christian Olsson, Peter G. Valeur, Christer Löfstedt: Water revisited: a powerful attractant for certain stored-product moths. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata 103, 2002, pp. 99-103.
  5. ↑ Dhana Raj Boina, Bhadriraju Subramanyam: Insect Management with Aerosols in Food-Processing Facilities. In: Farzana Perveen (editor): Insecticides - Advances in Integrated Pest Management. ISBN 9789533077802
  6. ↑ P. Trematerra, P. Gentile: Mass trapping of Ephestia kuehniella Zeller in a traditional flour mill. 10th International Working Conference on Stored Product Protection. Julius Kühn Archive 425, 2010, pp. 748–753.
  7. ↑ A. Hase: New observations on the males and females of the parasitic wasp Nemeritis canescens. Work on morphological and taxonomic entomology from Berlin-Dahlem 4 (1), 1937, pp. 47-61.
  8. ↑ A. Paust, C. Reichmuth, C. Büttner, S. Prozel, CS Adler, M. Schöller: Spatial effects on competition between the larval parasitoids Habrobracon hebetor (Say) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) and Venturia canescens (Gravenhorst) (Hymenoptera : Ichneumonidae) parasitizing the Mediterranean flour moth, Ephestia kuehniella Zeller. Proceedings of the 9th International Working Conference on Stored Product Protection, 2006, pp. 797-803.
  9. ↑ Udo Sellenschloh, Susanne Kolls: Prevent vermin and fight them naturally. W. Ludwig Verlag, 1996, ISBN 3-7787-3530-6
  10. ↑ Christel Sachs, Jutta Koop: Uninvited house guests. Sachs-Verlag, 1994, ISBN 3-928294-00-8
  11. ↑ Recognize food moths. Retrieved August 18, 2017 .
  12. ^ The Pyraloidea database: global information system on pyraloidea
  13. ↑ Ulrich Roesler: The German species of the Homoeosonia-Ephestia complex. Communications from the Munich Entomological Society 55/56, 1956, pp. 104–160.
  14. ↑ British Lepidoptera: subfamily Phyticinae
  15. ^ Franz Essl, Wolfgang Rabitsch: Neobiota in Austria. Federal Environment Agency, Vienna 2002, 432 pp. PDF
  16. ^ CABI Invasive Species Compendium