Chelonus spinigaster: A new species of Braconid Wasp from Uttar Pradesh.

Moths of the Family Gracillariidae are found throughout the world except on Antarctica and some remote islands. Their larvae are leaf-miners, worm-like caterpillars that live in tunnels inside leaves. This makes these Moths significant agricultural pests, and considerable amounts of research have been dedicated to finding ways to control them. One of the most successful methods of reducing Mining Moth populations is the deliberate introduction of parasitoid predators, Insects (usually Wasps) which lay their eggs on or in the leaf-mining caterpillar, which the parasitoid larvae then consume. Since most parasitoids target only a single prey species, which is an advantage when introducing a biological control, as it makes them highly unlikely to target unintended species. However, before this can be done, suitable parasitoids need to be identified, something which has not been done in every part of the world.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 12 February 2018, Zubair Ahmad of the Department of Biology at King Khalid University, and Hamed Ghramh, also of the Department of Biology, and of the Research Centre for Advance materials Science, at King Khalid University, describe a new species of Braconid Wasp targetting Acrocercops lysibathra, a Mining Moth which feeds on a number of fruiting trees in India, a country where parasitoid-prey relationships have been little studied.

Braconid Wasps are small parasitoid wasps (Wasps whose larvae grow inside the bodies of a living animal host) targeting a variety of Insect and Spider species. They are unusual in that they will lay multiple eggs within the same host (most parasitoid Wasps lay a single egg on each host), thereby allowing multiple larvae to mature within a large host, which is not necessarily killed in the process. Braconid Wasps are often fearsome in appearance, but are harmless, other than to targeted host species, as they lack stings.

The new species is placed in the genus Chelonus and given the specific name spinigaster, meaning 'spiney tail'. The species is described from eight female and fourteen females collected from Acrocercops lysibathra caterpillars living on Cordia latifolia (Sebesten Fruit) trees at Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. These are small Wasps, reaching about 2.4 mm, black in colour with yellow and brown markings, with a rugose (corrugated) epidermis.

Chelonus spinigaster, female specimen. Ahmed & Ghramh (2018).

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Phyllocnistis indistincta, Phyllocnistis saepta & Phyllocnistis verae: Three new species of Leaf-mining Moths from Asia.

Moths of the Family Gracillariidae are found throughout the world except on Antarctica and some remote islands. Their larvae are leaf-miners, worm-like caterpillars that live in tunnels inside leaves. Some groups of Gracillarid Moths are specialist miners of the leaves of some of the most ancient groups of Angiosperms (flowering plants) such as Laurels and Magnolias, and fossils leaf mines that resemble those of the Moths have been found in fossilised leaves from the Cretaceous of North America, which also suggests this is an ancient association. However the oldest fossils of the Moths themselves are from (Eocene) Baltic amber, and there is no way to connect these moths to the leaf mines, so it is quite conceivable that the Moths have only recently colonised these plants, and that the burrow shape is coincidental, simply a good shape for a leaf mine in this sort of leaf.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 18 February 2018, Natalia Kirichenko of the Sukachev Institute of Forest, the Siberian Federal University, and Zoologie Forestière, Paolo Triberti of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale in Verona, Shigeki Kobayashi of the Entomological Laboratory at Osaka Prefecture University, Toshiya Hirowatari of the Entomological Laboratory at Kyushu University, Camiel Doorenweerd of the Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences at the University of Hawai'i, and the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, Issei Ohshima of the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at the Kyoto Prefectural University, Guo-Hua Huang of the Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory for Biology and Control of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests at the Hunan Agricultural University, Min Wang of the Department of Entomology at the South China Agricultural University, Emmanuelle Magnoux, also of Zoologie Forestière, and Carlos Lopez-Vaamonde, again of Zoologie Forestière, and of the Institut de Recherche sur la Biologie de l’Insecte at the Université François-Rabelais de Tours, describe three new species of Leaf-mining Moths from Dogwood trees, Cornus sp., in Asia. All are placed in the genus Phyllocnistis.

The first new species is named Phyllocnistis indistincta, in reference to the colouration of the forewing, with indistinct yellow-white bands. This species has wing-spans of between 4.0 and 6.5 mm, and is white in colour with yellow, orange, brown and black markings. It was found on Wedding Cake Trees (Cornus controversa), Flowering Dogwoods (Cornus florida), and Korean Dogwoods (Cornus kousa), on Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu islands, Japan.

Phyllocnistis indistincta, male specimen. Scale bar is 1 mm. Kirichenko et al. (2018).

The second new species described is named Phyllocnistis verae, in honour of Vera Kirichenko, the mother of Natalia Kirichenko. This species has wingspans of 6.0-6.1 mm and is white with dark brown and orange markings. This species was found at a single location, beside the Yenisei River in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, on a White Dogwood tree, Cornus alba.

Phyllocnistis verae, male specimen. Scale bar is 1 mm. Kirichenko et al. (2018).

The final new species is named Phyllocnistis saepta, meaning 'to block' in reference to the shape of a blotch on the forewing. This species has a wingspan of 5.0 mm and is white in colour with orange, brown and black markings. This species was found living at a single location in Weixi County, in Yunnan Province, China, on a Large-leaf Dogwood, Cornus macrophylla.

 Phyllocnistis saepta, male specimen. Scale bar is 1 mm. Kirichenko et al. (2018).

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A new species of Leaf Mining Moth from Brazil.

Moths of the Family Gracillariidae are found throughout the world except on Antarctica and some remote islands. Their larvae are leaf-miners, worm-like caterpillars that live in tunnels inside leaves. Some groups of Gracillarid Moths are specialist miners of the leaves of some of the most ancient groups of Angiosperms (flowering plants) such as Laurels and Magnolias, and fossils leaf mines that resemble those of the Moths have been found in fossilized leaves from the Cretaceous of North America, which also suggests this is an ancient association. However the oldest fossils of the Moths themselves are from (Eocene) Baltic amber, and there is no way to connect these moths to the leaf mines, so it is quite conceivable that the Moths have only recently colonized these plants, and that the burrow shape is coincidental, simply a good shape for a leaf mine in this sort of leaf.

In a paper published in the journal Zootaxa on 12 December 2012 a team of scientists led by Rosângela Brito of Departamento de Zoologia at the Instituto de Biociências at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, describe a new species of Gracillarid Moth from the Atlantic Rain Forest of southern Brazil.

The new Moth is placed in the genus Phyllocnistis, which has a global distribution and which is known to target a wide range of plants, though the majority are found in North America, where their larvae feed particularly on Laurels, Magnolias and Witch-Hazels. The new species spends its larval stage on the Passion Vine, Passiflora organensis, the first member of the genus found on a plant found on a plant of the Family Passifloraceae, and the first from the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest.

It is given the specific name Phyllocnistis tethys, after Tethys, a Titan goddess in the Greek mythology; the wife of Oceanus, and the mother of rivers, springs, streams, fountains and clouds, a reference to the cloudy and humid nature of the area of the Brazilian Atlantic Rain Forest where the new species was first found.

Phyllocnistis tethys is a ~2.5 mm feathery whit Moth with yellow markings on the tips of its wings. It is known only from a single site at an altitude of 900 m in the Atlantic Rainforest of Rio Grande do Sul State.

Phyllocnistis tethys. (A) Adult, wings spread, pinned, dorsal view. Scale bar is 0.5 mm. (B) Adult, wings folded, on Passiflora organensis leaf, in dorsal view. (C) Adult, wings folded, on Passiflora organensis leaf, in lateral view. Brito et al. (2012).

The eggs of Phyllocnistis tethys are laid on the underside leaves of Passiflora organensis, a Passion Vine known to horticulturalists as the Organensis Passionflower or Batwing Passionflower. The emergent larvae drill into the leaves of the vine, where they remain for the rest of the larval part of their life cycle, molting three times within the leaf; the final larval stage, typically slightly under 5 mm long, does not breed, but spins a silk cocoon within which it  pupates, emerging as an adult.

The leaves and flower of Passiflora organensis. Ruhr Universität Bochum.

Larval and pupal morphology of Phyllocnistis tethys under light microscopy. (A) First larval (“sap-feeding”) instar, dorsal and ventral views. Scale bar 100 μm. (B) Third larval (“sap feeding”) instar, dorsal and ventral views. Scale bar 400 μm. (C) Fourth larval (“cocoon spinning”) instar, dorsal and ventral views. Scale bar 400 μm. (D–F) pupa, dorsal, ventral and lateral views. Scale bar 300 μm. Brito et al. (2012).

Life history of Phyllocnistis tethys: (A) Passiflora organensis shoot twining around on a fern at the type locality, showing several leaves with leaf mines at different development stages. Scale bar 100 mm. (B) Leaf mine on abaxial leaf surface (open and closed arrows, respectively, indicate empty chorion on leaf surface, and sap-feeding larva seen through transparent mine). Scale bar 1 mm. (C) Egg containing developing embryo. Scale bar 0.2 mm. (D) Freshly hatched larva (indicated by closed arrow; open arrow indicates green frass lines left within the egg chorion. Scale bar 0.3 mm. (E) Third-instar (sap-feeding) larva. Scale bar 1 mm. (F) Detail of frass lines and damage on leaf parenchyma, left by the larva within the mine. Scale bar 1 mm. (G) fourth-instar (spinning) larva. Scale bar 1 mm. (H) Passiflora organensis containing several pupae, seen by transparency (indicated by arrows). Scale bar 20 mm. (I) A pupal chamber in detail, showing a pupa by transparency. Scale bar 5 mm. (J) Pupa, lateral view. Scale bar 0.5 mm. (K) Pupal exuvium protruded (arrow) from mine exit hole, just after the adult emergence. Scale bar 2 mm. Brito et al. (2012).

See also The taxonomic implications of host preference in Large Blue Butterflies, New species of Owlet Moth from Sichuan Province, China, Five new species of Snout Moth from China, New Tiger Moths discovered in east Asia and New species of Leaf-Mining Moth from northern Chile.

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