Bombyx mandarina
species of insect
Bombyx mandarina, the wild silk moth, is a species of moth in the family Bombycidae. It is the closest relative of Bombyx mori, the domesticated silk moth. The larvae (caterpillars) of both species are called silkworms, famous for producing the fibroinous cocoon that is harvested by humans for silk.
Unlike its domesticated relative, who has lost the ability to fly and is too synanthropic to even survive outside human cultivation, B. mandarina is a fairly ordinary moth. The main difference between the wild B. mandarina and the domesticated B. mori is that the former has a more slender body with well-developed wings in males, and is dull greyish-brown in colour.
Phylogeny and systematics
Bombyx mandarina and the domesticated Bombyx mori constitute two of the currently identified eight species of the genus Bombyx, the true or mulberry silk moths. The origin of the domestic silk moth is enigmatic. It has been suggested that it is the survivor of an extinct species that diverged from the ancestors of Bombyx mandarina millions of years ago. However, this is based on an untenable molecular clock hypothesis that assumes that wild and domestic silk moths evolved equally fast after their lineages diverged. Rather, the effects of artificial selection have accelerated evolution in the domestic form to a point where it is hard to trace the origin of the numerous breeds of domestic silk moths even with the most modern molecular phylogeny methods.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bombyx mandarina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.