This is a cautionary tale for those hoping to track down information about a particular species…in this case a moth, Saturnia pavonia, the Small Emperor. I was hoping to find the chemical identity of the female’s sex pheromone.
My search for papers about S. pavonia was to no avail, then I discovered that S. pavonia had previously been known as Pavonia pavonia. Aha! I thought…but no luck with that name either.
It was only after much additional hacking that I spotted another “pavonia”, Eudia pavonia. It turned out that this was yet another scientific binomial for the Emperor moth…and it was seconds later that I had her sex pheromone, which you can see in my blog post about the Small Emperor on Sciencebase.com.
Pictured below, the male’s antenna, which can detect picograms of the sex pheromone on the wind apparently from up to 16 kilometres away. This species is the only one of its genus Saturnia found naturally in the British Isles.
