I have been regularly searching my Snowberry hedge for mines without much success, only finding numerous short white vacated mines that I could not identify (below). Hence I suspect they are not from a Symphoricarpos-specific species.
However I realised that I should have been looking on the underside of the leaf as well as the upper surface, and doing that yielded a single mine which I initially felt could posssibly be Phyllonorycter emberizaepennella; however the mine is probably not large enough and the larva does not look right, having a couple of dark spots on the last two segments, so I suspect it is almost certainly not. So suggestions sought please!
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| Larva from mine on Symphoricarpos |
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| Mine on Symphoricarpos Stowe 20-09-2024 |
I also found a couple of mines on a crab-apple, one of which I think is a vacated mine of Lyonetia clerkella.
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| Lyonetia clerkella mine? Stowe 20-09-2024 |
The second mine I have been unable to identify, so would appreciate some guidance here as well! The leaf was curled up with the mine in the fold as below:
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| Mine on Crab-apple Stowe 20-09-2024 |
On opening it up I found a very small green larva
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| Mine on crab-apple Stowe 20-09-2024 |
Hello Phil,
ReplyDeleteYour corridor on snowberry is a fly mine. The larva on snowberry looks good for a Phyllonorycter species but I can't tell from the images whether its emberizaepennella or trifasciella. They're quite easy to rear through, but in fact can be told apart at the pupal stage: both pupate inside the mine (like almost all Phyllonorycters) but emberizaepennella creates a strong rugby-ball shaped cocoon around the pupa which is usually dark green in colour. The corridor mine on apple is indeed Lyonetia clerkella, while the Phyllonorycter is either blancardella or hostis and unfortunately they need rearing and then dissection to separate.
Many thanks Dave,
ReplyDeleteI still have the larva of the snowberry individual, so I will try to rear it through, though I'm not sure whether it will pupate now that I have destroyed its mine!