Nara National Museum

Silverfish are known as one of the major pests which feed on paper and starch-based materials and can cause serious problems in museums, libraries and archives.Ctenolepismacalvum (Ritter, 1910) was first recorded from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and has also been known from Central American countries including Guyana and Cuba. Recently, its rapid spread to European countries, including Austria, Czech, Germany and Norway, has been reported. In addition, there are unverified records of C.calvum from 17 more countries in the on-line citizen-science platforms iNaturalist. We report C.calvum in Japan for the first time, from Hokkaido, Miyagi, Tokyo, Fukuoka and Nagasaki Prefectures. The specimens in Japan were observed in detail by stereomicroscope, optical microscope and scanning electron microscope. The occurrence of this species is a serious problem from the viewpoint of protection of cultural properties. We also registered their mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene in EMBL/GenBank/DDBJ.