DNA from 33 year old dried moth specimens help confirm larva as the elusive Wiseana fuliginea

The genus Wiseana, more commonly known as porina, consists of seven species: W. cervinata, W. copularis, W. fuliginea, W. jocosa, W. mimica, W. signata and W. umbraculata. Despite porina collections spanning two decades and several locations, adults definitively identified as W. fuliginea have been elusive. In May 2016, one larva from Southland yielded a mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase sequence significantly different (9/ 1,178 bp, 0.5%) to voucher adult specimens from the other six species. To confirm that the larva was W. fuliginea as suspected, we extracted DNA from 33 year old dried W. fuliginea adult voucher specimens held by the New Zealand Arthropod Collection. First attempts to amplify the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase genes failed, so primers were designed to amplify shorter (190 to 386 bp) overlapping fragments. A 1,035 bp mitochondrial sequence for each of the two museum W. fuliginea voucher moths was generated and proved identical to the sequence from the unidentified Southland larva.