A Bucks Invertebrate Group visit to Dancer's End NR organised by Neil Fletcher, gave several of us a chance to check out the leaf-mines there. Two of these were new to me and credit must go to Melissa and Andy Banthorpe for flagging them up:
First up is a Bucculatrix frangutella mine on Buckthorn, accompanied by feeding holes made by the larva after it had left the mine:
Second is a rather battered mine of Ectoedemia septembrella on Perforate St. John's Wort. I suspect it is unusual because the larva elected to pupate within the mine.
Andy King.
E. septembrella typically pupates in the mine, according to MBGBI Vol I. The moths breed on garden Hypericum shrubs, perhaps more readily than they do in native foodplant - there is a colony of them just outside my bedroom window and the mines turn up in the most unlikely places - outside the NEC in Birmingham last weekend, for example. I've only found the mines once on native St John's Wort species.
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