A Bionomic study of Bagworms (Lepidoptera: Psychidae) in selected areas of Kerala.

Abstract

Moths and butterflies come under the Order Lepidoptera. Psychidae is one of five moth families that make up the Super Family Tineoidea, Clade Ditrysia (Davis and Robinson, 1998) Members of the Family Psychidae are commonly called bagworms, bagworm moths, or bag moths because of bag-making behavior (Sugimoto 2009; Roh and Byun 2016) by their larval stages Different types of materials such as silk threads, plant twigs, leaves, bark tissues, algae, mosses, grass, lichens, animal debris, etc are used to build the bag around the larval bodies. Female moths of many species complete their life cycle inside their bags and do not develop as adult moths. The bagworm family consists of 10 subfamilies. There are 1450 described species from 241 genera reported from all over the world except Antarctica (Sobczyk, 2011, 2019, Nieukerken et al., 2011). Hampson (1892) listed 36 species from British India including Sri Lanka and Myanmar and is supposed to be the oldest record of bagworms from India. A checklist indicates the presence of 106 species belonging to 34 genera in India (Sobczyk, 2011).