Conservation strategies of Actias selene Hubner: A wild silk moth in Nagaland, India

Abstract

Actias selene Hubner (Indian moon moth), an indigenous wild silk moth is geographically distributed in tropical moist deciduous forest of South East Asia, mainly Mussourie and North-Eastern region of India, Afghanistan to Borneo, Hongkong, China, Japan and Ceylon. Due to anthropogenic reasons and unabated destruction of natural habitat, the distribution of this sericulturally important species is restricted to highly inaccessible area. Hence, formulation of certain tangible conservation strategies is need of the hour for sustaining the population structure of Actias selene. The paper highlights on the strategies of ex situ and in situ conservation adopted in natural condition in Nagaland climatic condition. Under ex-situ conservation replicable rearing were conducted in selected isolated patch on their two natural host plants during March-May (Season-I), July-August (Season-II) and October-December (Season-III). Among the seasons, season-I (March-May) emerged as best for rearing of Actias selene with almost equal emphasis to both the host plants followed by season-III (October-December) and season-II (July-August). Under in-situ conservation additional breeding material were introduced in Natural habitat followed by three natural regeneration methods namely, release of seed cocoons, release of dfls in leaf cups and release of chawki worms. Maximum production of cocoon was obtained by release of chawki worms followed by release of eggs and seed cocoons.