Thanks to Neil Fletcher for organising a Bucks Invertebrate Group field trip to Rushmere Country Park yesterday. One of the aims was to look for leaf-mines, and Neil and Tim Arnold will have a much longer list to add, but we also saw a couple of nice caterpillars.
UPDATE: I initially thought the larva in the two pictures below was the gelechiid micro-moth Pseudotelphusa paripunctella (Tawny Groundling), from spun leaves of oak. However, on further reflection it seems much more likely to be the more common relative Teleiodes luculella (Crescent Groundling). So it's not a new species for me after all, but instead a cautionary tale about the need to check identification options more carefully!
It was fun watching this Ancylis mitterbacheriana (Red Roller) hard at work spinning up its leaf fold.
There were at least half a dozen of these reddish-brown larvae beaten from Gorse. I wasn't sure what they could be, but thanks to Robert Homan for suggesting that they are likely to be one of the Blastobasis species, possibly B. lacticolella.
Finally here is a leaf-mine on oak, simply because I liked the shape! It's one of the Stigmella species, but there are plenty to choose from on oak and it is often not possible to identify to species without rearing them through.
Hi Martin,
ReplyDeleteSome nice images there! There are half a dozen records for Pseudotelphusa paripunctella in Bucks, mostly from Stoke Common, so it is very good to get another site for it.
You'd need to see the frass pattern to be certain, but the oak mine has the sinuous, meandering look of Stigmella basiguttella, which is just about the only oak Stigmella that is reasonably easy to do from the mine.
ReplyDeleteThanks Christopher, that's a good tip. I didn't examine the frass at the time and didn't retain the leaf, so I think I'll have to leave it as unconfirmed, but will watch out for this one in future. See also the correction to my erroneous gelechiid, which is almost certainly not Pseudotelphusa paripunctella.
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