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Studies in Conservation

ISSN: 0039-3630 (Print) 2047-0584 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ysic20

Operation Clothes Moth: Where PreventiveConservation and Public Engagement Meet

Amber Xavier-Rowe, Paul Lankester, Dee Lauder & David Pinniger

To cite this article: Amber Xavier-Rowe, Paul Lankester, Dee Lauder & David Pinniger (2018)Operation Clothes Moth: Where Preventive Conservation and Public Engagement Meet, Studies inConservation, 63:sup1, 445-450, DOI: 10.1080/00393630.2018.1504441

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2018.1504441

Published online: 11 Sep 2018.

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Operation Clothes Moth: Where Preventive Conservation and PublicEngagement MeetAmber Xavier-Rowe1, Paul Lankester1, Dee Lauder1 and David Pinniger2

1English Heritage Trust, London, UK; 2Independent researcher, Cookham, UK

ABSTRACTClothesmoths catchdata fromhistoric properties confirmsnumbers are on the increase in England.Citizen science research was conducted using Tineola bisselliella pheromone traps handed outfrom English Heritage properties from April to September 2017. One hundred and ninety-twoparticipants recorded moth counts from residential properties in 42 counties in England. Usingan average number of moths per trap, geographical spread indicates higher numbers in warmersouthern counties of England. Pale-backed clothes moths Monopis crocicapitella were caught insignificant numbers suggesting a new insect pest risk for historic house collections. Thresholdnumbers for clothes moths that could indicate an active infestation are proposed. Residentialflats appear to be more vulnerable to clothes moth activity possibly related to the shared wallsor spaces. The research was launched using a public relations campaign called ‘OperationClothes Moth’ which generated major media activity across the internet, radio, television, news-papers and magazines. Public awareness of insect pest management, preventive conservationand the work of conservators and conservation scientists was significantly increased.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived October 2017Accepted April 2018

KEYWORDSInsect pest management;citizen science research;webbing clothes mothTineola bisselliella; pale-backed clothes mothMonopis crocicapitella; mediacampaign

Insect pest management at English Heritage

Integrated pestmanagement (IPM) has been establishedat English Heritage (EH) since 1997. It has been funda-mental to preventing damage, improving collectionscare, building maintenance and recently raising thepublic profile of preventive conservation. Insect pestcatch data compiled each year suggest that thecommon or webbing clothes moth (WCM) Tineola bissel-liella numbers are rising. A public relations (PR) campaignabout the risk of clothes moth to historic collections wasconceived. This paper summarises IPM at EH focusing onclothes moths. It then outlines the ‘Operation ClothesMoth’ PR campaign and its impact on public awarenessof IPM and preventive conservation as well as reviewingthe findings from the citizen science research.

English Heritage is a charity responsible for the careof over 400 sites and half a million objects acrossEngland. Collections are housed in 113 historichouses, museums and stores. IPM at EH involvesinsect pest monitoring using over 3000 sticky blunderand clothes moth pheromone traps across 40 proper-ties with a further 31 sites undergoing visual checks.Traps are checked on a seasonal quarterly basis by con-servators, collections care assistants and site staff, whohave been trained in insect pest identification (ID).Insect pest ID and records are quality controlled bythe collections pest control manager. Results are col-lated into annual site reports which highlight risksand required actions including conservation cleaning,

building maintenance and localised insecticidal treat-ment, heat treatment or freezing. The IPM programmeis effective and sustainable because it is managed by adedicated collections pest control manager.

Insect pest data are used to identify long-term risksto EH collections. Over recent years, T. bisselliellanumbers caught in blunder and pheromone trapshave increased from 1142 in 2012 to 2469 in 2016(Figure 1). From 2008 traps with T. bisselliella phero-mone lure boards in ‘Demi Diamond’ holders manufac-tured by Killgerm Chemicals have been used. Theannual ‘total numbers caught’ data indicate a signifi-cant rise in T. bisselliella numbers, 216% over 5 years.Using ‘average numbers caught per trap’ and account-ing for infestations at specific properties indicate a riseof 143% over the last 3 years. The rising numbers ofclothes moths, particularly T. bisselliella, has also beenreported in the UK media and by Pinniger (2013).

Pale-backed clothes moths (PBCM) M. crocicapitellaappear also to be on the rise with small but increasingnumbers being caught on T. bisselliella pheromonetraps (Figure 2). Multiple specimens caught on trapsacross England have been confirmed as Monopis croci-capitella by Tony Irwin, an entomologist specialising inmoths. This is a potential new insect pest for historichouses and museums.

T. bisselliella with its voracious appetite and ability tocomplete multiple lifecycles in a year (in warmer temp-eratures) (Cox and Pinniger 2007) is emerging as the

© The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 2018

CONTACT Amber Xavier-Rowe amber.xavier-rowe@english-heritage.org.uk English Heritage Trust, London, UKThis article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

STUDIES IN CONSERVATION2018, VOL. 63, NO. S1, S445–S450https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2018.1504441

greatest risk to organic materials in EH collections par-ticularly those made from wool, silk, fur, feathers andskin. It is predicted that with a future change inclimate there will be an increased pest population(Brimblecombe and Lankester 2012).

Citizen science research project and PRcampaign

The rise in clothes moths in EH properties provided anopportunity to raise public awareness of IPM and pre-ventive conservation. A PR campaign was proposedwhereby members of the public were asked to helpmap the spread of T. bisselliella and M. crocicapitellaacross England by collecting a free EH brandedclothes moths trap (Figure 3) (impregnated with thefemale sex pheromone of T. bisselliella) from all 113staffed sites from April 2017. After 3 months ofexposure in the home, results could then be recordedon the EH website by the end of September 2017.

A clothes moths hunt concept was presented tothe PR team by Amber Xavier-Rowe in October 2016.The concept became the 2017 PR property springopening campaign and was supported by PR,

marketing, digital and historic property teams at EH.The campaign messages were honed and developedusing content provided by the collections conservationteam.

‘Operation Clothes Moth’, became the name of thecampaign. Its purpose was to increase awareness ofthe EH brand, highlight new season opening of ourproperties and the conservation expertise behindcaring for historic collections. The secondary purposewas to test the effectiveness of using citizen scienceresearch to answer the question whether clothesmoths are on the rise in England and to explore thereasons. The authors were also personally interestedin raising the public awareness of conservators andconservation scientists.

The campaign generated major press interest acrossall media when launched on 6 April 2017, starting witha feature on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, followedby 18 BBC regional radio interviews, a BBC radioworld service interview, 5 BBC 1 television (TV) newsand ITV Anglia TV news bulletins. The busy launchday culminated in a live interview on BBC GlobalWorld News TV, the BBC’s international arm with anestimated weekly audience of 85 million (Figure 4).The campaign also featured on the front page of theBBC News webpage, which receives in excess of 100million page views each week.

The printed news media were also interested. TheDaily Mail (7 April 2017) devoted a full page includinga cartoon. Articles also appeared in the Daily Telegraph(6 April) including an editorial comment, the Sunday Tel-egraph (9 April) with the heading ‘In the flight path ofMothmageddon’ and The Times (6 April). Features alsoappeared in Women’s Weekly (24 April) and The Specta-tor (6 May). The accuracy and quality of the reportingwere high, although spelling out to reporters the differ-ence between curators and conservators helped. The PRcampaign with reach across all media in the UK provedto be one of the most successful launched by EH.

Web pages were also created to support the PRcampaign and research. A film and trap instruction

Figure 1. English Heritage total annual WCM catch andnumber of T. bisselliella pheromone lure boards manufacturedby Killgerm Chemicals. These were introduced in 2008 and asfar as the authors are aware the formulation has remainedunchanged over the following period. Image: Dee Lauder.

Figure 3. English Heritage ‘Operation Clothes Moth’ brandedtrap. Image: Rebecca Bennett.

Figure 2. Tineola bisselliella and Monopis crocicapitella clothesmoths, caught on a Killgerm Chemicals T. bisselliella lure. Photo:David Pinniger.

S446 A. XAVIER-ROWE ET AL.

Figure 4. Amber Xavier-Rowe interviewed live by Philippa Thomas on BBC Global World News television.

Figure 5. Operation cloth moth web page record form. Image: English Heritage.

OPERATION CLOTHES MOTH S447

clip featured on the landing page. Further informationabout clothes moths and how to prevent damage alsofeatured. An input form was designed linked to a live‘heat’ map of England. There were also links to the col-lections conservation advisory pages. Traffic to the con-servation web pages where the ‘Operation ClothesMoth’ pages were located rose from 2011 in March2017 to 17,399 in April after the launch.

Towards the end of September, a social mediareminder in the form of three tweets and one facebook post were posted. The tweets said ‘Did you pickup a free moth trap this summer? Help our conserva-tion team and record your findings.’ Response whilstmodest for EH was good for a specialist topic withthe Facebook post reaching 39,685.

The level of national and regional press interest couldhave only been supported through active involvementof the whole collections conservation team and ento-mologist David Pinniger. Fronting such a high-profilecampaign was both frightening and exhilarating andprovided the best media training possible for the collec-tions conservation team. The press release and keymessages benefited from professional PR expertise.

Citizen science catch results

As far as the authors are aware, this is the first exampleof citizen science research applied to preventive con-servation. Citizen science has been defined by theOxford English Dictionary as ‘The collection and analy-sis of data relating to the natural world by members ofthe general public, typically as part of a collaborativeproject with professional scientists.’

In total 5000 traps were distributed to the 113 staffedsites, approximately 4500 were given to visitors and 213

moth counts were recorded, a 4.7% return rate. There isno direct comparison of what is a good return. Askingparticipants to wait 3 months before recording resultscombined with the assumption that those that failedto catch any decided not to participate possiblyinfluenced the rate of return. A comparison from thenature conservation is the high-profile Big ButterflyCount, which has been running for 6 years in the UKand reports 60,400 participants but not specificallyhow many returns (www.bigbutterflycount.org).

‘Operation Clothes Moth’ participants were asked torecord information on an online form (Figure 5). Thisform had restricted options aiding the data analysis.Recorded information included post code, propertytype and trap location, amongst others. The datawere then exported into Excel. Results were dividedinto four topics and some conclusions both clear andtentative could be made.

Clothes moths numbers

The total number of T. bisselliella caught by participantswas 3607. On average, 17 were found on each trap. Intotal, 69 of the 213 traps reported catching pale-backedclothes moths M. crocicapitella, with a total of 460. Thiscatch result for M. crocicapitella is much higher thanexpected when comparing totals from EH propertieswhere 15 were caught across the country in 2016 from94 traps, itself significantly more than in previous years.It would suggest that M. crocicapitella could pose athreat in future years to historic house collections.

Geographical location

The reported catch of T. bisselliella is higher in thesoutheast of England (average 23 per trap) (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Operation clothes moth data divided into English counties to show the geographical distribution. The average clothesmoth catch per trap is plotted, with WCM on the left, pale-backed clothes moths on the right, with individual scales. Image: PaulLankester.

S448 A. XAVIER-ROWE ET AL.

This then appears to radiate outwards, with the south-west and west midlands the next highest (17 and 16per trap). The east follows (12 per trap) with the north-east, northwest and east Midlands much lower (6, 5 and3 per trap). Statistically, using the Mann–Whitney Utest, the southeast is significantly different (99%) fromthe north east and significantly different from theeast (90%). However, the southwest is not statisticallysignificantly different from the southeast (90%). Thiscould be due to the small number of returns fromthe southwest. In Figure 6, there are regions with agreater concentration of T. bisselliella than others.These data can be easily influenced by just one partici-pant, for example, Norfolk had only five returns, with 0,3, 4, 17 and 92 total moths trapped. The one result of 92disproportionally increased the average. Anotherproblem was the lack of returns for some regions.Therefore regions have been assessed so that outlierdata and counties with no returns have less of anoverall influence.

M. crocicapitella moths are concentrated in south-east England with 86% of total catch and an averagecatch per trap of three. The east also had an averagecatch per trap of three which is significantly higherthan in other regions (Figure 6).

It should be noted, however, that there is a potentialbias in the data as participants who thought that theyhad a problem with moths at home could have beenmotivated to collect a trap. However 26% returnedresults of no reported catch, and 49% returned acatch of four or less clothes moths.

The data gathered from citizens has improved ourunderstanding of the threat of clothes moths. At EHwe only regularly place pheromone lure traps at 26sites in 11 counties, whereas participants have returneddata from 192 properties in 42 counties.

Housing type and age

Six of the top seven reported catches were all locatedin flats, and only three flats reported a zero clothesmoth catch (Table 1).

One hypothesis for this could be the number ofshared walls, floors or ceilings (hereafter called sharedspaces) with other properties that are outside of thecontrol of the owner (Table 2).

The age of the property also provides data thatappear to agree with the hypothesis that more voidslead to more problems. Generally, older houses willhave more dead spaces compared to modern types ofconstruction. Participants could select from twooptions on the form, pre-1950 or post-1950. Theaverage clothes moths catch per trap from a pre-1950property was 26 compared to 14 for a post 1950 prop-erty; this is a statistically significantly difference (99%).

As T. bisselliella infestations do not occur naturallyoutdoors in the UK and northern Europe (Plarre

2014), it follows that infestations must be carriedbetween houses on carpets, clothes and other posses-sions. Adjoining spaces give the moths an opportunityto spread without having to leave an enclosedenvironment.

Damage threshold levels

Participants were also asked to record damage – ‘Didyou spot any damage (Yes or No)’ (Figure 5). Thenumber of participants that reported seeing thedamage was approximately 40%. This could bedamage from any species of clothes moth. Theaverage T. bisselliella catch per trap, where damagewas noted, at 31 was statistically significantlydifferent (99%) to when damage was not noticed atseven per trap. This potentially identifies a thresholdvalue for an infestation whereby more than31 T. bisselliella moths suggests an established infesta-tion. Seven or less does not. Threshold catch numberscould help to indicate an acceptable level unlikely tocause damage. This could be a question to ask of EHdata in the future in terms of what is an acceptablelevel of T. bisselliella on a trap before seriousdamage is likely, combined with professional judge-ment relating to the property and type of materialson display.

Conclusion

A review of EH Tineola bisselliella catch numbers hasconfirmed that they are on the rise and are becomingthe insect pest of most concern. Damage is beinglimited through a systematic IPM programme whichhas been established since 1997. Using these findingsto raise the public profile of EH, IPM and preventiveconservation through a citizen science experimentresulted in considerable interest across all types ofpress media in the UK and beyond. The resulting

Table 2. Average clothes moths catch per trap for eachproperty type, and the number of shared spaces eachproperty has with neighbours.Property type Clothes moth average catch per trap Shared spaces

Bungalow 1.7 0Detached 13.2 0Semi 13.7 1Terrace 20.6 2Flat 46.2 5

Table 1. The zero catch rate for each property type.Propertytype

Zero catchcount

Total catchcount

% Zero catch of categorytotal

Bungalow 6 15 40Detached 25 67 37Flat 3 35 9Other 1 2 50Semi 13 50 26Terrace 7 41 17

OPERATION CLOTHES MOTH S449

public catch data whilst limited has improved overallunderstanding of clothes moths in the UK includingconfirmation that properties in southern England areat greater risk and that M. crocicapitella are becomingestablished in domestic homes. The citizen sciencedata has also provided evidence for a threshold levelof over seven clothes moths caught on a trap, indicat-ing a high risk of damage occurring. This informationcan help EH staff to target and plan IPM actions moreeffectively across the 40 properties monitored. We arealso interested in comparing the distribution of EHand public catch data to see if ‘hot spots’ can be ident-ified to further help maximise our IPM programme. Thegeneral quality of the public data was high whichsuggests that a citizen science approach may be aviable method to help answer preventive conservationresearch questions whilst raising public awareness andsupport.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Bob Child, Historyonics, who helped withsourcing the traps from a UK supplier (IPM Russell) at a cost

of £3360 for 5000 traps, and Mel Houston, National Trustfor Scotland, who sparked the idea about handing traps outto the public.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

References

Brimblecombe, P., and P. Lankester. 2012. “Long-termChanges in Climate and Insect Damage in HistoricHouses.” Studies in Conservation 58 (1): 13–22.

Cox, P. D., and D. B. Pinniger. 2007. “Biology, Behaviour andEnvironmentally Sustainable Control of Tineola bisselliella.”Journal of Stored Products Research 43: 12–32.

Pinniger, D. B. 2013. “Past, Present and Future. Changes inStatus and Distribution of Museum Insect Pests.”International Conference on IPM in Museums, Archivesand Historic Houses, Vienna, 2013.

Plarre, R. 2014. “Likelihood of Infestations by Tineola bisselliellaFrom Natural Reservoirs.” Eighth International Conferenceon Urban Pests, Geneva. 345–352.

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