Charley Eiseman
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Charley Eiseman
@ceiseman.bsky.social
1.4K followers 110 following 200 posts
Freelance naturalist, especially into leafminers, sawfly larvae, and other underappreciated herbivorous insects | http://bugtracks.wordpress.com
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In my pursuit of an unknown species of leaf-mining fly on false hellebore, I accidentally discovered a new species of stem-boring fly, which had a zillion other insects living in the stems along with it.
False Hellebore Fauna
For the past decade, I have been trying to rear an unknown species of Liriomyza (Agromyzidae) that mines leaves of false hellebore (Melanthiaceae: Veratrum viride). The mines are very scarce consid…
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It's not at all clear to me from that document why this species would be considered a pest. There is no mention of VSC, which I haven't heard of before.
Oh, never mind, I figured it out.
Three larvae of Cameraria guttifinitella (Gracillariidae), all tucked in for the winter in their cozy circular silk chambers in a poison ivy leaf.
Sure enough! Wonder what it all means.

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But the few bark mines I have seen on any kind of chestnut have been Marmara sp.
The type series of Ectoedemia castaneae, now considered a synonym, supposedly was reared from galls on chestnut, but no one has seen them--or reared it from chestnut--since 1913 or whenever that was. The thinking is that the larvae actually made bark mines on the twig that had the galls.
I do it from time to time. Not sure how often it sticks.
That is a terribly unfortunate common name for a moth that feeds on both oak and chestnut, and is one of numerous moths that do so. One of the chestnut specialists would be more deserving of it, but I don't think any ambiguous common names are useful.
Cool, thanks! I'll see if I have any better pics. The specimen is at the CNC, where Jose Fernandez-Triana will hopefully look at it eventually.
I was wondering if that dark object visible in the thorax in your previous photos was a parasitoid...
I just got an ID on that mordellid a couple of weeks ago. Now I have to see about the braconid I reared from it! I think that as stem borers, mordellid larvae often find themselves passing through galls, as do Melanagromyza larvae.
Yes, seems pretty mothy, which is why I asked about prolegs.
Are there definitely no abdominal prolegs?
This is an unknown--probably undescribed--species that makes a frass-filled mine on Populus trichocarpa in western North America. Adults haven't yet been reared. Larvae can be found from late July to mid-October. www.inaturalist.org/observations...
Stigmella says nom nom inside a cottonwood leaf
Huh. I missed that genus change.
I have a recurring problem where I can't get rid of the Search Results box when viewing a PDF in @adobe.com Acrobat. Anyone know how to fix this? Also, any way I can make everything AI-related go away, completely and forever?
That would be a little weird, since he didn't write that on any of his other labels.
But I was also thinking that looks more like an "L"
The host plant should be tupelo (Nyssa). I'm wondering if it might say "In Swamp"...
The label goes with this mating pair of Antispila nysaefoliella, collected in the late 1800s by William Dietz.
Any guesses what this says?