Of Moths and Miners

It's been a couple of cool days, so I've been finishing up my grading for the semester. Here's a neat little guy from Wednesday:

Chinquapin Leaf-miner Moth, (Dyseriocrania griseocapitella),
Van Patten Woods FP, Lake Co, IL 5/14/2014

This is a Chinquapin Leaf-miner Moth, (Dyseriocrania griseocapitella). It's in the family Eriocraniidae, which is a rather early split in the modern Lepidoptera.

They are called Leaf-miners because the tiny little caterpillars (less than a centimeter long, even as adults) actually eat oak and chestnut leaves from the inside out. That seems like a difficult thing for a tree to deal with, but this moth seems to be uncommon enough, at least in Lake County, that it's not a serious problem. (Well, this is the first one I've ever spotted, so they can't be too common, right?)

Because of the early divergence of this family from the rest of the Lepidoptera, they've been used at times in phylogenetic reconstructions (1) and investigations of the evolution of moth morphology. (2) Other researchers have used them to investigate the effects of metal pollution on both the moths and their subsequent relationships with fungi. (3, 4)

Given how many critters there are out there, it seems remarkable that no matter how obscure one seems to be, someone's devoted their time to learning all they can about it.

(1) Friedlander, T. P., Regier, J. C., Mitter, C., & Wagner, D. L. (1996). A nuclear gene for higher level phylogenetics: phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase tracks mesozoic-age divergences within Lepidoptera (Insecta). Molecular Biology and Evolution, 13(4), 594-604.

(2) Monaenkova, D., Lehnert, M. S., Andrukh, T., Beard, C. E., Rubin, B., Tokarev, A., ... & Kornev, K. G. (2012). Butterfly proboscis: combining a drinking straw with a nanosponge facilitated diversification of feeding habits. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 9(69), 720-726.

(3) V Kozlov, M., Haukioja, E., & F Kovnatsky, E. (2000). Uptake and excretion of nickel and copper by leaf-mining larvae of< i> Eriocrania semipurpurella</i>(Lepidoptera: Eriocraniidae) feeding on contaminated birch foliage.Environmental pollution, 108(2), 303-310.

(4) Lappalainen, J. H., Koricheva, J., Helander, M. L., & Haukioja, E. (1999). Densities of endophytic fungi and performance of leafminers (Lepidoptera: Eriocraniidae) on birch along a pollution gradient. Environmental Pollution,104(1), 99-105.