James Bayley Butler with the Royal Army Medical Corps, beginning as a lieutenant in 1915 and retiring a major after the war. For his service, he was awarded an MBE. Butler's primary research interest was in applied biology. He carried out research on "Catenaria anguillulae", a parasite of the ova of the liver fluke, from 1922 to 1932. Later on, Butler focused on the control of wood-boring beetles and the fungus that causes dry rot in wood "Serpula lacrymans". On this matter, he became an international expert, and assisted in the development of the company Biotox, which manufactured insecticides and fungicides for use
Nemapogon granella are uniformly greyish-brown and surrounded by a fringe of long hairs. On the head, the adults have a tuft of yellowish-white hairs. The caterpillar larvae eat rotting wood in the wild, though they prefer bracket fungi, usually Polyporales. Their mainstay food included Polyporaceae such as sulphur polypore ("Laetiporus sulphureus"), dryad's saddle ("Polyporus squamosus") or turkey tail ("Trametes versicolor"), as well as Fomitopsidaceae, e.g. birch polypore ("Piptoporus betulinus"). But they have also been found on "Serpula lacrymans" of the quite unrelated Boletales. Larvae in association with humans will feed on a variety of dry organic material, such as dried fruit (e.g.bilberries,