McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States of America.
School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States of America.
PeerJ. 2023 Mar 8;11:e14948. doi: 10.7717/peerj.14948. eCollection 2023.
Mezcals are distilled Mexican alcoholic beverages consumed by many people across the globe. One of the most popular mezcals is tequila, but there are other forms of mezcal whose production has been part of Mexican culture since the 17th century. It was not until the 1940-50s when the mezcal worm, also known as the "tequila worm", was placed inside bottles of non-tequila mezcal before distribution. These bottled larvae increased public attention for mezcal, especially in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Despite these larvae gaining global interest, their identity has largely remained uncertain other than that they are larvae of one of three distantly related holometabolous insects. We sequenced the COI gene from larvae in different kinds of commercially available mezcals. All larval DNA that amplified was identified as the agave redworm moth, Those that did not amplify were also confirmed morphologically to be the larva of this species.
梅斯卡尔酒是一种墨西哥蒸馏酒，在全球范围内被许多人饮用。其中最受欢迎的一种是龙舌兰酒，但也有其他形式的梅斯卡尔酒，其生产自 17 世纪以来一直是墨西哥文化的一部分。直到 20 世纪 40 年代至 50 年代，一种被称为“龙舌兰虫”的梅斯卡尔虫才被放置在非龙舌兰梅斯卡尔酒的瓶子里再进行分销。这些瓶装幼虫增加了梅斯卡尔酒在全球范围内的知名度，特别是在亚洲、欧洲和美国。尽管这些幼虫引起了全球的关注，但除了它们是三种亲缘关系较远的全变态昆虫的幼虫之外，它们的身份在很大程度上仍然不确定。我们从不同种类的市售梅斯卡尔酒中的幼虫中测序了 COI 基因。所有扩增的幼虫 DNA 都被鉴定为龙舌兰红虫蛾，那些没有扩增的幼虫也通过形态学确认为该物种的幼虫。
