Fairly excited about this as although it's a common moth this was my first attempt at breeding from leaf mines as I've been having difficulty telling the mines on beech of Phyllonorycter maestingella and Phyllonorycter messaniella from the leaf mine website. I didn't expect to get a moth a couple of days after placing some mines in a plastic box.
Unfortunately it seems they are both similar as adults, my micro book doesn't even include maestingella in the text or adult (although it includes a photo of the leaf mine). So a really bad picture taken through a plastic box (I almost lost it when I opened the box). Can it be confirmed from the photo and knowing it was on beech? If not it can have it's bits checked.
Mark Griffiths, Garsington, Oxford.
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteGiven that this emerged from a mine on beech and that there are only two alternatives, that is definitely maestingella so there's no need to keep it. Phyllonorycter messaniella might have the same basic pattern of stripes and spots but if you look at the adult image on the UK Moths website you'll see that it looks quite different, being rather subdued in colouring compared to the much brighter maestingella. There's actually nothing else quite like it so messaniella can quite often be done on sight as an adult. By the way, if you didn't already know, this should be recorded as an active leaf-mine for the date you originally found it, with details of the food-plant, the fact that it was reared through and the adult emergence date all added as a "comment" (this ensures that adult flight-time data doesn't get messed up by emergences at inappropriate times, which can often happen when moths are reared indoors especially over the winter).
Well done on rearing this one through. Phyllonorycters are the easiest to do because nearly all of them pupate within the mine. At this time of year the turn-around time can be quite quick because they often have another brood to feed up which will over-winter either at the larval or pupal stage.
thanks Dave for the ID and the tip about recoding. I was wondering whatyou put under "stage" for vacated leaf mines - do you leave it blank?
ReplyDeleteIt depends upon which system you use for your records. If MapMate then you have the choice of "Mine" or "Mine (vacated)" which is clear enough. Using the moth form on iRecord you are only offered "Mine" and you should use that for either, but for a vacated mine simply add a comment that it was vacated (and, of course, in either case name the plant/tree it was found on).
Deleteok, thanks for that Dave.
ReplyDelete