Antheraea pernyi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Antheraea pernyi

Female

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Saturniidae
Subfamily:	Saturniinae
Tribe:	Saturniini
Genus:	Antheraea
Species:	A. pernyi

Binomial name

Antheraea pernyi
(Guérin-Méneville, 1855)

Antheraea pernyi, the Chinese (Oak) Tussah Moth (or "Chinese Tasar Moth"), also known as Temperate Tussah Moth, is a large moth in the family Saturniidae. Antheraea roylei is an extremely close relative and the present species might actually have evolved from ancestral A. roylei by chromosome rearrangement (Arunkumar et al. 2006).

They are originally from southern China. Used for tussah silk production, they have been distributed more widely across subtropical and tropical Asia. Unlike the Domestic Silkmoth which is entirely dependent on human care, tussah silkmoths can survive in the wild if they escape from captivity; small local populations of such feral stock may thus occasionally occur.

This is one of the major producers of tussah silk. It was of commercial importance during the Han Dynasty and early Three Kingdoms era, about 200 BC to 250 AD. More recently, the hybridogenic species Antheraea × proylei is being bred for tussah silk production. It originated from a natural hybrid between male A. pernyi and A. roylei females, F1 females of which were backcrossed to A. pernyi males. For reasons unknown, it is a case of paternal mtDNA transmission: the mitochondrial genome, normally inherited from the mother only in sexually reproducing organisms, is almost identical to that of the present species. (Arunkumar et al. 2006).

[edit] Gallery

Eggs one day before hatching	1st instar caterpillars	2nd instar caterpillar	3rd instar caterpillar
4th instar caterpillar	5th instar caterpillars	6th instar caterpillar	6th instar caterpillar

[edit] References

Arunkumar, K.P.; Metta, Muralidhar & Nagaraju, J. (2006): Molecular phylogeny of silkmoths reveals the origin of domesticated silkmoth, Bombyx mori from Chinese Bombyx mandarina and paternal inheritance of Antheraea proylei mitochondrial DNA. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40(2): 419–427. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.02.023 (HTML abstract). Supplementary figure 1 (JPG) Supplementary figure 2 (JPG) Supplementary figure 3 (JPG)