Latest Bombycidae Stories
OXFORD, England, April 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Oxitec today announced the development of strains of the silkworm, Bombyx mori, which allow production of exclusively male populations and could greatly enhance the efficiency of silk farming. Writing in the international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/03/1221700110 abstract), Oxitec scientists report that the new strains will allow easy separation of...
[Watch Video: A Robot Being Driven By A Moth] Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Robots have been used to handle a number of dirty chores for human beings in the past, some of which include looking for and cleaning environmental spills. Robotic engineers have also looked towards other animals and insects for inspiration when building out these autonomous machines. Tokyo researchers have now brought these two elements together in a new study published in...
Selangor, Malaysia, Dec 5, 2012 - (ACN Newswire) - Microsporidiosis is a disease caused by highly infective parasitic microsporidian. The spores of microsporidian, known as pebrine, infect almost all ages, stages, breeds and hybrids of silkworms. A recent publication by Singh and colleagues in the Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science explores a range of methods to combat this disease - a key task that determines the future of the sericulture industry.The disease is primarily...
Pheromone preference, and the initiation of a complex programmed sexual behavior, is determined by the specificity of a single sex pheromone receptor protein expressed in a population of olfactory receptor neurons in the silkmoth (Bombyx mori). The study, which will be published on June 30th in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, provides the first direct proof of the long-held belief that the control of sexual behavior in male moths originates in the chemical specificity of the pheromone...
The development and successful testing of a method for unreeling the strands of silk in wild silkworm cocoons could clear the way for establishment of new silk industries not only in Asia but also in vast areas of Africa and South America. The report appears in ACS' journal Biomacromolecules.Fritz Vollrath, Tom Gheysens and colleagues explain that silk is made by unraveling"” or unreeling "” the fine, soft thread from cocoons of silkmoths. The practice began as far back as 3500 BC in...
A new study published online on May 7th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, has found the source of silkworms' attraction to mulberry leaves, their primary food source. A jasmine-scented chemical emitted in small quantities by the leaves triggers a single, highly tuned olfactory receptor in the silkworms' antennae, they show.The results are contrary to the notion that insects are generally attracted to their host plants through the recognition of a blend of volatile compounds by a...
Latest Bombycidae Reference Libraries
The silkworm (Bombyx mori or "raw silk of mulberry") is the larva of a moth that is economically important as the producer of silk. Its diet consists solely of mulberry leaves and it is native to northern China. The silkworm is so called because it spins its cocoon from raw silk. The cocoon is made of a single continuous thread of raw silk from 1000 to 3000 feet (300 to 900 meters) long. Silkworms have a good appetite. They eat mulberry leaves day and night continuously. Thus, they grow...
