The Moth in the Air Is Not Eating Your Coat: Keratin Digestion, Larval Damage, and Why Soiling Is the Variable

1. Introduction: the wrong insect

A small moth crosses a room and is swatted. The household concludes the problem is being dealt with.

It is not, and the reason is worth understanding because it changes what should be done instead.

1.1 What this paper covers

The biology that makes these insects unusual, the two practical consequences that follow from it, and what the guidance recommends. The second consequence, in §11, is the one we think most households have never been told.

2. What keratin is

The material at the centre of this.

Keratin is a protein component of feathers, hair, fur, horns, antlers, hooves, nails and beaks.³ Keratin-rich diets such as feathers and wool cannot be digested by most other animals and are resistant to common digestive enzymes.²

2.1 Why it resists

Keratin is a structural protein built to be durable. It is what an animal makes when it needs a material that will not degrade, and the same property that makes wool a good textile makes it a poor food.

That is the problem these insects have solved, and almost nothing else has.

3. How few organisms can do this

The scale of the exception.

The common clothes moth is one of only a few eukaryotic organisms that can digest keratinaceous materials such as wool and feathers. Among insects, the ability is limited to some bird lice and the larvae of certain carpet beetles and moths.¹

Clothes moths and carpet beetles are among the very few insects, fungi and microorganisms that are capable of digesting keratin.³

3.1 Putting that in context

Not a few insects. A few eukaryotes, which is to say a few organisms with nucleated cells, out of everything.

This journal has written about cellulose digestion in termites and about wood decay fungi, both of which are unusual capabilities. Keratin digestion is rarer than either, and the insects that manage it are in a household cupboard.

3.2 Why so few

The reason for the scarcity is the reason keratin exists. An animal investing in a protective outer material is under selection for one that nothing can eat, and the disulfide cross-linking in §4.1 is the result.

Any organism that breaks that has access to an enormous and almost uncontested food supply. Feathers, hair and hoof accumulate constantly and almost nothing competes for them, which is why the few specialists that manage it are so successful in the niches where the material collects.

A wardrobe of woollens is, from that perspective, an unusually concentrated version of a nest floor: a large quantity of keratin, undisturbed, at a stable temperature, with nothing else competing for it.

3.3 The bird lice connection

That some bird lice share the ability¹ points at where it came from. An animal that lives on feathers has an obvious reason to evolve the capacity to eat them, and a nest full of feathers is the natural habitat the domestic species came out of. Section 14 returns to that.

4. The proposed mechanism

How the barrier is broken, on current evidence.

The mechanism of keratin digestion is not yet fully understood. Transcriptomic work identified cysteine synthases, cystathionine beta-synthases and cystathionine gamma-lyases as a candidate mechanism, enzymes which release hydrogen sulfite, which may reduce the disulfide bonds in keratin.¹

4.1 Why disulfide bonds are the target

Those cross-links are what hold the protein in its tough configuration. Reducing them unlocks the structure so that ordinary proteases can reach the chain.

The insect is not attacking keratin directly so much as taking apart the thing that makes keratin resistant, and then digesting the protein underneath by conventional means.

4.2 The status of this

The authors present these as candidate enzymes identified by screening a transcriptome, and state plainly that the mechanism is not fully understood.¹ This is a proposed pathway rather than a demonstrated one.

5. The enzyme evidence

What the transcriptome contained.

A high-quality gut transcriptome was generated from larvae reared on keratin-rich and keratin-free diets, consisting of 428,221 contigs functionally annotated and screened for candidate enzymes. The dataset included 27 differentially expressed contigs with trypsin domains, among which 20 were associated with keratin feeding, and seven collagenases that were upregulated on the keratin-rich diet.¹

5.1 The design point

Rearing larvae on two diets and comparing expression is what makes the result interpretable. Enzymes present on both diets are general digestion; enzymes that rise on keratin are candidates for doing the specific job.

That is the same comparative logic this journal praised in the rodenticide field trial, where genotyping individual animals separated resistance from other explanations.

5.2 What the numbers do and do not show

Twenty of twenty-seven trypsin-domain transcripts associated with keratin feeding is a strong signal within that enzyme family. Seven collagenases upregulated on the keratin diet is a small absolute number from a transcriptome of over four hundred thousand contigs.¹

Both are consistent with a specialised digestive response and neither establishes that these particular enzymes do the work. Identifying candidates by expression is the first step of an argument, not the whole of it, which is why §4.2 matters.

6. The bacterial contribution

The other half of the explanation.

Separate work, working from the hypothesis that the ability might be conferred by symbiotic microbes, used a simple assay to detect keratinase activity and a method to screen gut bacteria for candidate enzymes, which were isolated from feather-fed larvae, and is described as larvae maintaining gut bacteria that secrete enzyme cocktails to facilitate the digestion of keratin.²

The transcriptomic analysis separately suggested that larvae possess an unstable intestinal microbiome that may nevertheless contribute to keratin digestion.¹

6.1 The tension between those two

One study finds gut bacteria secreting keratin-degrading enzymes. The other describes the microbiome as unstable while allowing that it may contribute.

Those are not incompatible. An unstable community can still perform a function if the function is performed by whichever members are present. But they are different emphases, and we would describe the bacterial contribution as supported and not settled.

6.2 The framing the authors use

The evolutionary success of insects is promoted by their association with beneficial microbes that enable the utilization of unusual diets, and this species is offered as an intriguing example of this phenomenon.²

Termites digesting cellulose through gut symbionts is the same story, and this journal noted in the termite article that the two groups share ancestry with cockroaches. Unusual diets in insects keep turning out to be microbial partnerships.

7. The family they came from

A detail that explains a great deal.

Clothes moths belong to a family of the Lepidoptera known as the Tineidae, the fungus moths, which mainly feed on detritus, fungi and lichens.⁴

7.1 Why that matters

The family are detritivores. They eat the accumulated organic material in sheltered places, which is what a bird's nest, a mammal burrow and the underside of a sofa all have in common.

A textile pest, on that reading, is a detritivore that found a house. That framing explains §11 better than any amount of discussion about fabric quality does.

8. Which stage feeds

The central diagnostic point.

All moths and beetles progress through egg, larva, pupa and adult stages, and often most of the eating and damage is done by the larvae.³ It is the immature larvae, rather than the adult moths, that cause the damage.⁴

8.1 The same structure in the beetles

Carpet beetle larvae are the damaging stage, and the mothproofing test methods in §21 are conducted against larvae of the fur beetle and the carpet beetle rather than against adults.⁸

So the pattern is common to both groups, which is convenient because the practical advice is then the same regardless of which is present.

8.2 Why two unrelated groups converged on this

Moths and beetles are separate orders that arrived at keratin feeding independently, and both placed the capability in the larva rather than the adult.

That is the general insect pattern rather than anything specific to keratin: the larva is the feeding and growing stage and the adult is the dispersing and reproducing one. It matters here only because the dispersing stage is the one people see, which is what produces the error this article opens with.

9. What that means for the adult

The statement that should change household behaviour.

Adult clothes moths and carpet beetles may not eat at all.³

9.1 The consequence

Killing the moth in the air removes an insect that was doing no damage. It does not remove the larvae, which are in the material and are the reason the moth exists.

This journal has made a version of this argument several times, about visible signs and reachable stages. Here it is at its starkest: the visible stage and the damaging stage are different individuals, and only the invisible one matters.

9.2 What the adult is good for

It is a signal. A flying clothes moth indoors means larvae completed development somewhere in the building, which means material was fed on.

Treated as evidence rather than as a target, it is genuinely useful. It is the only part of the life cycle that announces itself.

9.3 The timing information it carries

An adult in flight means a larva completed development recently, which places the feeding in the preceding weeks or months rather than years ago.

That distinguishes an active problem from historical damage, which matters because a household that finds holes in a stored garment usually cannot tell whether the insect is still present. A live adult says it is.

10. The detection problem

Why the damage is usually complete before anyone acts.

The larvae are capable of feeding on a wide variety of items, and do so usually undiscovered until after damage is done.³

10.1 The three reasons

The larvae are small and cryptic. The materials they attack are stored rather than used, so nobody looks at them. And the damage is cumulative, so there is no moment at which it becomes noticeable except when an item is next taken out.

A coat worn weekly is inspected weekly without anyone intending to. A coat in a box is inspected once a year at best.

10.2 Why disturbance itself protects

Beyond inspection, handling disrupts. Larvae feeding on a surface that is regularly moved, shaken and exposed to light are in a worse position than larvae in a folded item at the back of a cupboard.

The guidance's recommendation of occasional inspections⁷ therefore does two things at once, and we would say the disturbance is at least as valuable as whatever the inspection finds.

11. The soiling preference

The fact this article exists to communicate.

Clothes moths prefer to feed on items contaminated with organic materials such as spilled food, body fluids, fungal spores or pollen.³

11.1 What that means in practice

A clean wool garment is a less attractive food than a soiled one. The determining variable is not that the item is wool; it is what is on the wool.

That is consistent with §7. A detritivore family that has adapted to keratin has not stopped preferring material with other organic content in it.

11.2 The implication people find counterintuitive

The item at greatest risk is not the most valuable one. It is the one that was worn, sweated in, eaten near, and then put away without laundering.

An expensive garment that goes to a cleaner after each wearing is protected by a habit nobody adopted for this reason. A cheaper one worn casually and stored directly is the vulnerable one, which inverts the intuition that pests find the good wool.

The same logic applies to the items that get forgotten entirely: a rug under a bed, a felt liner in a case, a wool blanket at the back of a shelf. Those combine soiling, stillness and darkness, which is the full set of conditions rather than any one of them.

11.3 Where the contaminants come from

The four named categories are spilled food, body fluids, fungal spores and pollen.³ Three of those arrive on a garment through ordinary wear and the fourth through storage conditions.

Fungal spores on a stored textile point back at humidity, which is the condition this journal has identified behind decay, mould and several insect problems. A damp cupboard is not merely a place where wool gets musty; it is a place where wool acquires a component of the insect's preferred diet.

That closes a loop with §7. A family whose ancestral diet is detritus, fungi and lichens is being offered, in a humid wardrobe, something much closer to its original food than clean wool ever was.

11.4 The single most useful piece of advice

Clean before storing. Not because cleanliness is virtuous but because the contamination is what the insect is selecting for.

The guidance agrees, listing clean storage and regular cleaning among the protective measures.⁷

12. Why that is the most useful fact

Because it is free, and because the alternative advice is not.

Mothproofing chemistry, storage products and treatment services all cost money. Washing a garment before it goes into a box costs nothing anybody was not already going to spend.

12.1 The failure mode it addresses

The classic loss is a woollen item put away at the end of a season, unwashed because it was going into storage anyway, and taken out damaged a year later.

That sequence is produced by an entirely reasonable decision. Nobody launders clothing they are about to stop wearing, and the reason to do so is not obvious without knowing §11.

13. The species involved

Who is actually doing this.

The two main pest moth species are the common or webbing clothes moth, Tineola bisselliella, and the case-bearing or case-making clothes moth, Tinea pellionella, both of which attack carpets, upholstery, clothing and animal specimens. The webbing species is now the most common and has become a much more marked problem in recent years. The adults are small, dull, grey-fawn moths that look similar, the webbing species having more of a golden sheen and the case-bearing species being more silvery-grey. They scuttle around or fly when it is warm and fold their wings along their backs at rest.⁵

13.1 The beetles

Carpet beetle adults have coloured scales on their bodies: white and orange-red for the common carpet beetle, white and yellow for the furniture carpet beetle, and white, brown and yellow for the varied carpet beetle.³

13.2 The behavioural clue

That these moths scuttle and fold their wings flat⁵ distinguishes them from the pantry moths that fly more freely, which is a distinction worth making because the two generate the same call and have completely different sources.

14. Where they come from

The origin of an indoor infestation.

Case-bearing clothes moths often come from birds' nests, particularly in unused chimneys, and can fly in through windows or open doors.⁵

14.1 The connection to the rest of this journal

A bird's nest in a disused chimney is a keratin deposit in a sheltered cavity. It is the natural habitat of the family described in §7, and it is also a structural condition.

This journal's pigeon article dealt with what a roost leaves behind. Here the same nest material is the reservoir for a different pest, and the remedy is the same: exclude the birds and remove the nest.

14.2 The inspection this implies

A recurring clothes moth problem in a house with no obvious infested item is a reason to look at chimneys, roof spaces, eaves and anywhere a bird has nested, rather than to keep treating wardrobes.

That is the same source-finding logic this journal applied to drain flies, where the adults were the signal and the breeding site was elsewhere in the building. The insect in the room tells you the population exists; it does not tell you where.

Bird nest material is also a good reason to be sceptical of a treatment aimed only at textiles. If the reservoir is a chimney, the wardrobe will be recolonised however thoroughly it is cleaned, and the household will reasonably conclude that the treatment failed.

15. The heated building effect

Why this is worse in a cold climate than it sounds.

One generation normally takes a year to develop, but webbing clothes moths can reproduce rapidly in heated buildings with two generations or more per year.⁵

15.1 The recurring pattern

An insect whose outdoor cycle is annual runs faster indoors because the building removes the seasonal constraint.

This journal found the same thing with overwintering invaders, with cockroach development and, in the previous article, with termites persisting through prairie winters in heated structures. A building is a climate, and the climate it provides is temperate all year.

15.2 The consequence for a Manitoba house

A long heating season is a long breeding season. We would expect the indoor advantage here to be larger than in a milder climate, and we flag that as inference rather than a sourced finding.

16. What they will actually eat

A mid-century feeding comparison that is more informative than its age suggests.

A 1958 study compared feeding by larvae of the webbing clothes moth, the black carpet beetle, the furniture carpet beetle and by adult firebrats, against three classes of fabric: synthetic, including nylon, dacron, orlon and acetate rayon; natural, including silk crepe, wool, linen and cotton percale; and combinations of wool with synthetics.⁶

The clothes moth and the carpet beetle did extensive damage to wool and the combination of wool and synthetic fabrics.⁶

16.1 The blend finding

Wool blended with synthetic was still extensively damaged. A blend is not protection, because the insect is eating the wool component and the synthetic fraction simply falls apart around it.

That is worth saying because blends are often assumed to be safer, and the assumption does not survive the test.

The proportions tested included a fabric that was 45 per cent wool and 55 per cent synthetic, so a minority wool content was sufficient to sustain extensive damage.⁶ Dilution is not protection when the insect can select the component it wants.

17. The synthetic exception

The finding that undermines the simple rule.

The furniture carpet beetle fed extensively on acetate rayon fabric, but the black carpet beetle did not.⁶

17.1 Why this matters

The working rule is that these pests eat natural protein fibres and leave synthetics alone. One of the four species tested ate a synthetic extensively and a closely related one did not.

So the rule holds at the level of the group and fails at the level of the species, which means identification changes the prediction. That is the same lesson this journal drew about ants, where supercolonial and territorial species require opposite bait strategies.

17.2 The honest caveat

This is a single comparison from 1958 reported through a later textbook chapter.⁶ Fabric technology has changed substantially since, and we would treat the specific finding as historical and the principle as durable.

18. The firebrat result

The fourth species in that comparison, which belongs to a different order entirely.

The firebrat was the only species that fed extensively on viscose rayon.⁶

18.1 What a firebrat is doing in a fabric study

Firebrats and silverfish are not keratin feeders. They are starch and cellulose feeders, which is why paper, book bindings and starched or sized textiles are their targets.

Their inclusion in a fabric pest comparison, and their distinctive result on a cellulose-derived fibre, is a reminder that damage to textiles has more than one possible author, and that the author determines what else in the building is at risk.

18.2 The diagnostic consequence

Damage confined to viscose or to paper alongside fabric points away from moths and beetles entirely. We would treat that pattern as reason to look for a humidity problem rather than a keratin one, and flag the inference as ours.

19. What the signs look like

What an inspection is actually looking for.

Signs include holes, shed skins, casings, and frass in hidden or carpeted spots.⁷ Carpet beetle damage is accompanied by characteristic fecal pellets.⁶

19.1 Why shed skins are the best sign

A larva moults repeatedly and leaves the cast skin behind. Those skins persist long after the larva has gone, which makes them evidence of a completed infestation as well as a current one.

They are also the sign least likely to be mistaken for something else, since holes in fabric have many causes and frass is easily read as ordinary dust.

Holes in particular are a weak signal. Wear, snagging, moth damage and beetle damage all produce loss of fibre, and a hole tells you something happened without telling you what or when.

The casings referred to in the same list belong specifically to the case-bearing species,⁷ whose larva constructs and carries a portable case built from the material it is feeding on. A case made of the same fibre as the garment is close to invisible against it, which is a neat piece of camouflage and a practical problem for anyone inspecting.

It also means the case itself is diagnostic once recognised. A small tube of fibre the same colour as the surrounding textile, sitting where nothing should be sitting, identifies both the pest and the species without anyone having to catch an adult.

19.2 Where to look

The named locations are hidden and carpeted.⁷ Under furniture, at carpet edges, in the folds of stored items and in the back of wardrobes are where the material sits undisturbed, which is the condition §10 identified.

20. What the guidance recommends

Effective treatments include hot washing, freezing, steam, vacuuming, and facility-level chemical or heat applications, with textiles protected by clean storage, breathable wrapping, regular cleaning, and occasional inspections.⁷

20.1 The shape of that list

Four of the five treatments are physical. Cleaning, heat, cold and vacuuming are not subject to resistance, do not require a label, and can be performed by the occupant.

That is an unusually favourable position and it follows from the pest being confined to a defined set of items rather than distributed through a structure.

Compare the bed bug case, where the harbourage is the building and physical measures reach only part of it. Here the harbourage is a wardrobe, a rug or a box, all of which fit in a freezer or a washing machine.

20.3 Why heat and cold both work

Both are listed, and they act on the same vulnerability by opposite routes.⁷ An insect adapted to a stable sheltered microclimate has narrow tolerances in both directions, and an item small enough to move is an item whose temperature can be taken outside them.

The choice between them is therefore about the textile rather than about the insect. Wool that would felt or shrink in a hot wash goes in the freezer instead, and we flag that as our reasoning rather than a sourced recommendation.

20.2 Breathable wrapping

The specification of breathable is worth noting.⁷ A sealed impermeable container traps moisture, and this journal's decay fungi article set out what happens to organic material held damp.

The objective is exclusion of the insect without creation of a humid microclimate, which is a narrower target than simply sealing things up.

21. The mothproofing tradition

The chemical approach, which is applied to the textile rather than to the building.

Mothproofing compounds are formulated to give keratinous material a washfast and lightfast protective finish against insects, applicable to material in the raw and in the processed state, including raw or processed wool, other animal hairs, hides, furs and feathers.⁸

21.1 How efficacy is tested

Standard tests subject treated wool to attack by 15 larvae of each pest for 14 days at 28 degrees and 65 per cent relative humidity, with separate standards for the clothes moth and for the fur beetle and carpet beetle, at active ingredient concentrations measured in parts per million based on the weight of the wool.⁸

21.2 What is distinctive about this approach

The treatment is applied to the commodity at manufacture rather than to a building during an infestation. It is closer to wood preservation than to pest control, and this journal's decay article described that logic: protect the material at the point of manufacture and the building never needs treating.

That also means it is invisible to the householder and to the pest control operator. A garment either arrived protected or it did not, and neither party can tell.

21.3 The washfast requirement

That the finish must be washfast and lightfast⁸ is a demanding specification. A treatment that washes out after a few launderings protects a garment for the period in which it is being worn and cleaned, and fails during the storage period in §12.1 when the risk is actually concentrated.

We have not established how long such finishes persist in practice, and would treat any claim of lifetime protection with caution.

22. Limitations and open questions

The keratin mechanism is proposed rather than demonstrated. Stated in §4.2 by the authors themselves.¹

The bacterial contribution is supported and not settled. Two studies emphasise it differently, as set out in §6.1.¹²

The fabric comparison is from 1958. Reported through a later textbook chapter, and fabric technology has changed since.⁶

Two sources are commercial. The treatment list and protective measures come from a rug retailer's guidance, and the mothproofing material from patent specifications written to motivate an invention.⁷⁸

We have not quoted adult size. One source gives a figure that appears to contain a typographical error, and rather than guess at the intended value we have described the moths qualitatively.⁵

No efficacy data for the physical treatments. We located no controlled comparison of hot washing against freezing against steam for these species, and the recommendation rests on trade and museum practice rather than on trial data.

No Manitoba data. We found no local information on which species predominate here, and §15.2 is inference.

Sections 3.2, 7.1, 11.1, 17.1, 18.2 and 19.1 are our reasoning. The bird lice origin argument, the detritivore framing, the soiling interpretation, the species-level rule, the firebrat diagnostic and the preference for shed skins are ours rather than sourced positions.

Our commercial position. This article's central recommendation is that a household clean items before storing them, which is free and requires nobody to call us.

23. Conclusion

Clothes moths and carpet beetles are among the very few organisms of any kind that can digest keratin, a material that resists common digestive enzymes and that most animals cannot break down.¹²³ The proposed mechanism involves enzymes releasing hydrogen sulfite that may reduce the disulfide bonds holding the protein together, supported by proteases that rise on a keratin diet and by gut bacteria secreting keratin-degrading cocktails.¹²

Two consequences follow and both cut against the ordinary response. The damage is done by larvae, adults may not eat at all, and the moth crossing the room is a signal rather than a cause.³⁴ And the insects prefer items contaminated with spilled food, body fluids, fungal spores or pollen,³ which means the variable a household controls is not the fibre but what is on it.

Which produces a conclusion unusual for this journal in being both cheap and easy. The family these moths came from eats detritus in sheltered places,⁴ and a wardrobe is a sheltered place. Wash the coat before it goes in the box, and the sheltered place stops being worth eating.

References

1. Next-Generation Sequencing Analysis of the Tineola bisselliella Larval Gut Transcriptome Reveals Candidate Enzymes for Keratin Digestion. PubMed Central PMC8394580. Used for the statements that the clothes moth is one of a few insects that can digest keratin, leading to the destruction of clothing, textiles and artwork; that the mechanism of keratin digestion is not yet fully understood; that the species is one of only a few eukaryotic organisms able to digest keratinaceous materials such as wool and feathers, with the ability among insects limited to some bird lice and the larvae of certain carpet beetles and moths; for the transcriptome of 428,221 contigs generated from larvae reared on keratin-rich and keratin-free diets; for the identification of cysteine synthases, cystathionine beta-synthases and cystathionine gamma-lyases as a candidate mechanism, these enzymes releasing hydrogen sulfite which may reduce the disulfide bonds in keratin; for the 27 differentially expressed contigs with trypsin domains of which 20 were associated with keratin feeding, and the seven collagenases upregulated on the keratin-rich diet; and for the suggestion that larvae possess an unstable intestinal microbiome that may nevertheless contribute to keratin digestion. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8394580/
2. Vilcinskas, A. and colleagues (2020). Larvae of the Clothing Moth Tineola bisselliella Maintain Gut Bacteria that Secrete Enzyme Cocktails to Facilitate the Digestion of Keratin. Microorganisms, 8(9), 1415. doi:10.3390/microorganisms8091415. Used for the statements that the evolutionary success of insects is promoted by their association with beneficial microbes that enable the utilization of unusual diets, with this species offered as an intriguing example; that the caterpillars have adapted to feed on keratin-rich diets such as feathers and wool, which cannot be digested by most other animals and are resistant to common digestive enzymes; and for the method of using a simple assay to detect keratinase activity and screening gut bacteria for candidate enzymes isolated from feather-fed larvae. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7563610/
3. Clothes Moths and Carpet Beetles. Illinois Department of Public Health, structural pest control information. Public health agency source. Used for the statements that carpet beetle adults have coloured scales on their bodies, being white and orange-red for the common carpet beetle, white and yellow for the furniture carpet beetle and white, brown and yellow for the varied carpet beetle; that clothes moths and carpet beetles are among the very few insects, fungi and microorganisms capable of digesting keratin, a protein component of feathers, hair, fur, horns, antlers, hooves, nails and beaks; that clothes moths prefer to feed on items contaminated with organic materials such as spilled food, body fluids, fungal spores or pollen; that all moths and beetles progress through egg, larva, pupa and adult stages with most of the eating and damage often done by the larvae; that larvae are capable of feeding on a wide variety of items and do so usually undiscovered until after damage is done; and that adult clothes moths and carpet beetles may not eat at all. https://dph.illinois.gov/topics-services/environmental-health-protection/structural-pest-control/clothes-moths-carpet-beetles.html
4. Clothes moths identification guide. Natural History Museum. Museum reference source. Used for the statements that the two moths most commonly found doing damage to natural fibres are the common clothes moth and the case-bearing clothes moth; that it is the immature larvae rather than the adult moths that cause the damage to natural fibres such as woollen clothing, upholstery, carpets and furs; that both moths have a similar life cycle and infestations can be controlled using the same approach; that clothes moths belong to a family of the Lepidoptera known as the Tineidae, the fungus moths, which mainly feed on detritus, fungi and lichens; and that the larvae are adapted to feed on keratin, a protein found in natural fibres. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/identify-nature/common-insect-pest-species-in-homes/clothes-moths-identification-guide.html
5. Carpet Beetles and Clothes Moths: What they are, what they eat and how to control them. Building conservation reference source. Used for the statements that the common or webbing clothes moth and the case-bearing or case-making clothes moth are the two main pest species, both attacking carpets, upholstery, clothing and animal specimens; that the webbing species is now the most common and has become a much more marked problem in recent years; that the adults of both are small, dull, grey-fawn moths that look similar, with the webbing species having more of a golden sheen and the case-bearing species being more silvery-grey; that they scuttle around or fly when it is warm and fold their wings along their backs at rest; that case-bearing clothes moths often come from birds' nests, particularly in unused chimneys, and can fly in through windows or open doors; and that one generation normally takes a year to develop but webbing clothes moths can reproduce rapidly in heated buildings with two generations or more per year. https://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/carpet-beetles-clothes-moths/carpet-beetles-clothes-moths.htm
6. Pests of Fabrics and Paper. Chapter 8, urban entomology textbook, University of California Riverside Department of Entomology. Used for the account of a 1958 comparison of feeding by larvae of the webbing clothes moth, the black carpet beetle and the furniture carpet beetle, and by adult firebrats, against three classes of fabric comprising synthetics including nylon, dynel, dacron, orlon, vicara and acetate rayon, naturals including silk crepe, wool, linen and cotton percale, and combinations of wool with synthetics; for the findings that the clothes moth and the carpet beetle did extensive damage to wool and to the wool and synthetic combinations, that the furniture carpet beetle fed extensively on acetate rayon fabric while the black carpet beetle did not, and that the firebrat was the only species that fed extensively on viscose rayon; and for the illustration of furniture carpet beetle damage to a woollen carpet accompanied by fecal pellets. https://entomology.ucr.edu/ebelingchapter8
7. Insect infestation of textiles. Commercial rug retailer guidance. Trade source with a commercial interest, cited as attributed material. Used for the statements that moths and carpet beetles attack keratin-rich textiles including wool, silk and fur; that signs include holes, shed skins, casings and frass in hidden or carpeted spots; that effective treatments include hot washing, freezing, steam, vacuuming and facility-level chemical or heat applications; and that textiles should be protected with clean storage, breathable wrapping, regular cleaning and occasional inspections. https://www.renaissancerugportland.com/post/2017/04/08/insect-infestation-of-textiles
8. Mothproofing process patents covering protection of keratinous material from insects that feed on keratin. United States patent specifications. Unusual provenance, written to motivate an invention, cited as attributed material. Used for the statements that such compounds are intended for proofing keratinous material against feeding damage, particularly for providing a washfast and lightfast protective finish, applicable to material in the raw and processed state including raw or processed sheep's wool, other animal hairs, hides, furs and feathers, with effectiveness sought against larvae of the webbing clothes moth, the common clothes moth and the false clothes moth as well as fur beetles and carpet beetles; and for the description of standard mothproofing tests in which treated wool samples are subjected for 14 days at a constant 28 degrees and 65 per cent relative humidity to feeding by 15 larvae of each pest, at active ingredient concentrations measured in parts per million based on the weight of the wool. https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/4283444