How two Bangladeshi zoologists named a new moth
A zoologist couple from Chattogram, Md Jahir Rayhan and Sayema Jahan, determined the genus and the species of a newly discovered moth and came up with a name for it — Paraxenoacria spinosa
No, they did not open the '100 beautiful names for Moths' book. Instead, they reared the moth in their laboratory in Chattogram and observed it. After conducting research for six months, the zoologist couple Md Jahir Rayhan and Sayema Jahan determined the genus and the species of this new moth and finally came up with a name for it — Paraxenoacria spinosa.
Paraxeno is a Greek word that means bizarre or peculiar and Acria is a moth genus. In the moths of the Acria genus, there is a curve above the front wings, called an excavation. However, Rayhan and Jahan's moth has the excavation on the back wings. Because of this characteristic, they named it peculiar Acria or Paraxenoacria.
The species' name 'Spinosa' comes from the word spine. The moth has six to seven tall spines in the male genitalia, which is a unique characteristic among the moth population. Hence the name — a peculiar Acria with spines.
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Perhaps a bit too exotic for an insect the size of your thumb. However, according to these scientists, this is significant for science and more importantly, for nature.
"Every organic being of the earth needs a scientific name — be it a plant, a microorganism, or an animal. For scientists, scientific names work as a lingua franca; from every corner of the world, they can understand the language. That is why coming up with a genus and a species, the two parts that form a scientific name, is a significant incident for science," Rayhan said.
Genus is the noun and species is the adjective of that particular organism. For example, the scientific name of humans is Homo sapiens. The noun or the genus Homo means human, while sapiens means wise, which describes our unique characteristic.
"There used to be multiple species of the genus Homo, like the Homo erectus, the humans who could stand erect, or the Homo floresiensis, who lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia. And then we came, the wisest of them all, hence the name. This way scientists name organisms which helps future scientists study it further," Rayhan added.
Every organism in the world has been grouped according to their names and characteristics in this manner.
Rayhan started working with moths in 2018 since moths and butterflies are the second-largest living organism group in the world. So it is a huge and diverse world to study. Another reason is that there are contradictory characteristics among them — while there are silk-producing moths, there are also moths that destroy your fine clothes. While some moths are pests and highly harmful to crops, several species of moths are consumed as good sources of protein in many regions of Africa.
"Moths and butterfly wings have so many diverse colours, they are exquisite. This diversity also attracted me to study moths," Rayhan explained.
Rayhan and Jahan both graduated in Zoology from the University of Chittagong in 2023. After that, Rayhan went to the US for a year-long research programme at the Florida Museum of Natural History, under the University of Florida. He is working on the evolution of moth silk and on the molecular structure of pest moths.
Sayema Jahan is currently working on another joint research on a very special butterfly — the Sundarbans crow butterfly. This one is exclusive to Bangladesh's Sundarbans and is on the verge of extinction. She is studying its molecular structure, ecology, and other characteristics.
How they established the name
Till now, more than 1.5 lakh moth species have been discovered worldwide, and they have been categorised into 128 families. One of these families is Paleopodidae, which has 10-12 moths under this category. And our 'peculiar Acria' falls into this family.
Around April this year, Rayhan and Jahan collected the larvae of the moth from the University of Chittagong. After collecting the larvae, they reared them in their laboratory at room temperature.
"From the larva stage to the adult stage, we examined the smallest of the morphological characteristics under the microscope. After the microscopic studies, we compared the information with the other genus and species of the family and found out that it is a completely different species than others," Rayhan said.
They studied the moths' morphological characteristics: their ecology, what plant leaves they feed on, how the caterpillars make their cocoon with the silk, the characteristics of their wings, the veins on the wings, the characteristics of their sex organs, characteristics of their larva and caterpillar stages, etc.
"And when we compared these with the other genera of Paleopolididae, we found that this one is more diverse than the others. That is when we determined that it is a new genus and a completely new species that has never been named before," he added.
After that, they prepared the manuscript and sent it to Zootaxa, one of the leading journals in this sector for scientific naming. Two scientists reviewed the paper and accepted the comparison and interpretation. The article was then published in the journal in October, with the title 'A new genus and species of Peleopodidae Hodges, 1974 (Insecta: Lepidoptera) from South-East Asia'.
There is a website called iNaturalist, where people share photographs of different moths, birds, butterflies, and insects. Researchers keep track of these photos to observe which species is found in which country or region. Tracking these images, Rayhan and Jahan saw that this genus is not unique to Bangladesh, rather we can find this in other South Asian countries like India and Southeast Asian nations Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Singapore. So in their paper, they mentioned it as a moth found all over Southeast Asia.
"The moth specimen is currently preserved in the museum of the University of Chittagong. Whenever something like this is discovered, it is preserved in the natural history museums, so that if someone wants to work further on it, they can access the specimen," Rayhan said.
Rayhan further explained the significance of moths through another example.
Papaya flowers need a particular moth for pollination, called Hawkmoth. Without this insect, we would not have any papaya in the world. This way, every plant needs moths for pollination, for fruits.
"In the scientific world, we often use the proverb 'No Hawkmoth, no papaya'. This is just one example of the significance of the insects," Rayhan said.
From silk production to a source of protein for humans, birds, and reptiles, moth populations impact human life and nature in many ways.
"We even get ice cream dye from moths," he said.
