Common Clothes Moth

• GeneralIts larvae digest the keratin in wool; the adult barely eats and hardly flies.
• Its larva can digest keratin, the protein of wool and hair, something almost no animal manages, thanks to a gut with extreme chemical conditions.
• It attacks above all garments stored dirty, because sweat and food residues give the larva the nutrients wool alone does not.
• The larva digests keratin, the protein of hair, wool, skin and feathers, which hardly any animal can make use of because its disulphide bridges make it resistant to digestive enzymes.
• It does not manage this alone: its gut carries bacteria that secrete keratinase enzymes.
• The adult eats nothing at all and lives about thirty days; all the damage is done by the larva.
• It shuns light, which is why it always turns up in dark, undisturbed corners.
• It probably comes from central or southern Africa and reached Europe in the late eighteenth century; it spread worldwide in the twentieth with central heating, which gave it the dry conditions it prefers.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Wardrobes, carpets and textile stores

Size at birth

Ivory-coloured oval egg of about 1 mm; the newly hatched larva measures 1 mm and the mature larva reaches 13 mm

Sexual maturity

The adult emerges with no functional mouthparts, does not feed and only breeds; it flies little and often prefers to move about on foot

Gestation / incubation

The eggs hatch in 4-10 days in the warm season and up to 30 in cold conditions; the larval stage lasts from 35 days to 30 months with between 5 and 45 moults, and the pupa 8 to 44 days

Litter / clutch size

Up to 300 eggs per female

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Tineola bisselliella · Rutgers NJAES, ficha Clothes moths · Insects Limited · Ficha de especie de Tineola bisselliella · Insects Limited, ficha Webbing clothes moth