Family Sphingidae belonging to Order Lepidoptera whose members are commonly known as Hawk moths or Sphinx moths. There three subfamilies of this family named Macroglossinae, Smerinthinae and Sphinginae. hawkmoths distributed all over the world mostly preferring tropical areas. is very less literature available on hawkmoths, so an attempt made understand diversity patterns throughout India. The ...

Yucca moths are most well known for their obligate pollination mutualism with yuccas, where pollinator moths provide yuccas with pollen and, in exchange, the moth larvae feed on a subset of the developing yucca seeds. The pollinators, however, comprise only two of the three genera of yucca moths. Members of the third genus, Prodoxus, are the “bogus yucca moths” and are sister to the pollinator ...

Fitness costs associated with resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crops are expected to delay the evolution of resistance. In a previous study where pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), larvae overwintered in outdoor insectaries, individuals from Bt-resistant strains had lower survival than individuals from Bt-susceptible strains or F1 progeny from crosses b...

The adults of diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella L, are known to have been transoceanic migrants in Europe since ancient times. The insect, which has its origin in Asia Minor, spread to other parts of the world with the spread of the cultivation of its host, the crucifers, and by using its own migrational abilities over long distances. Several large scale transoceanic migrations have been re...

Moths depend on pheromone communication for mate finding and synthetic pheromones are used for monitoring or disruption of pheromone communication in pest insects. Here we produce moth sex pheromone, using Nicotiana benthamiana as a plant factory, by transient expression of up to four genes coding for consecutive biosynthetic steps. We specifically produce multicomponent sex pheromones for two ...

Pheromone traps were used to assess the distribution of two pheromone races of European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hübner), in North Carolina, 10 and 20 yr after previous, similar assessments. In the previous studies, moths responding to a 97Z: 3E isomeric blend (Z blend) of 11-tetradecenyl acetate predominated in the far western parts of the state, whereas moths responding toa3Z: 97Eblend...

Here, we present a draft genome sequence of Bacillus altitudinis strain B-388, including a putative plasmid. The strain was isolated from the intestine of Indian meal moth, a common pest of stored grains, and it is characterized by the production of extracellular RNase, similar to binase, which is of interest for comparative studies and biotechnology.

Invasive species can have profound effects on a resident community via indirect interactions among community members. While long periodic cycles in population dynamics can make the experimental observation of the indirect effects difficult, modelling the possible effects on an evolutionary time scale may provide the much needed information on the potential threats of the invasive species on the...