Pébrine, or "pepper disease," is a disease of
silkworms, which is caused by protozoan
microsporidia
Microsporidia are a group of spore-forming unicellular parasites. These spores contain an extrusion apparatus that has a coiled polar tube ending in an anchoring disc at the apical part of the spore. They were once considered protozoans or pr ...
n parasites, mainly ''
Nosema bombycis'' and, to a lesser extent, ''
Vairimorpha'', ''
Pleistophora'' and ''
Thelohania'' species. The parasites infect eggs and are therefore transmitted to the next generation.
The silkworm larvae infected by pébrine are usually covered in brown dots and are unable to spin silkworm thread.
Antoine Béchamp
Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp (16 October 1816 – 15 April 1908) was a French scientist now best known for breakthroughs in applied organic chemistry and for a bitter rivalry with Louis Pasteur.
Béchamp developed the Béchamp reduction ...
was the first one to recognize the cause of this disease when a
plague of the disease spread across
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
.
''Nosema bombycis'' is a microsporidium that kills all of the silkworms hatched from infected eggs and comes from the food that silkworms eat. If silkworms acquire this microsporidium in their larval stage, there are no visible signs; however, mother moths will pass the microsporidium onto the eggs, and all of the worms hatching from the infected eggs will die in their larval stage. Therefore, it is extremely important to rule out all eggs from infected moths by checking the moth's body fluid under a microscope.
See also
*
Flacherie
Flacherie (literally: "flaccidness") is a disease of silkworms, caused by silkworms eating infected or contaminated mulberry leaves. Flacherie infected silkworms look weak and can die from this disease. Silkworm larvae that are about to die from Fl ...
*
Muscardine
References
*
Pasteur Valléry-Radot (Hrsg.): ''Œuvres de Pasteur''. Band 4: ''Études sur la maladie des vers à soie''. Masson, Paris 1926, S. 54-186.* Chavannes: ''Ueber die Krankheit des Seidenspinners und die Erziehung einer gesunden Brut desselben''. In: Berliner entomologische Zeitschrift, Band 5, 1861, S. 175ff.
* Nicola Williams, Miles Roddis: ''Languedoc-Roussillon''. MairDumont, Ostfildern 2009, S. 106.
Diseases of Lepidopterans
Sericulture
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