Hi everyone,

We now have over 1,900 observations, how amazing!

It has been over a year since the last journal post for this project (last post was June, 2024)… I hope to be a bit more frequent with these posts in the future. My plan is to highlight some interesting observations and discussions from this project. For today's post I am sharing some recent project-relevant developments.

About the new “Leafmine” Annotation

iNaturalist has put out some new options for the “Evidence of Presence” Annotation, including one for “Leafmines”. This makes looking for leaf mine records much easier on iNat.

I’ve had a think about what the new Annotation means for this project. This project was originally meant to help find leaf mine observations, as there was no way to actually find them before.. but now there is! With the Annotation! There are other projects out there, which automatically suck up Observations that fulfill certain criteria, such as the Australian Gall projects. For that project, as long as the record was in Australia and it is Annotated as a gall, the observation will be automatically included in the Australian Galls project.

This is different from THIS project. For this project, as you will all know, Observations must be added manually. This has been a bit of a pain in terms of getting new records, as it’s really about word of mouth. However, the new Annotation field makes finding records Annotated with “Leafmine” easy to find.

Which brings me to this project. I think this project is still super valuable as it is. The requirement for input of a Host Plant ID means that IDs of leaf miners becomes more possible – many leaf miners are specialists.

Therefore, for now this project will run as it is. I hope that if you see wild leaf mine observations, you continue to add them to this project. Continue using the “Leafmine” Annotation, but know that it will not add the observation to this project automatically – it will still have to be added manually.
I will personally monitor the “Leafmine” Annotation for observations not added here and add them where possible. As of today I’ve already checked every single observation that was from Australia and Annotated with “Leafmine”.

I would appreciate if people still added Observations to this project manually. Behind the scenes the dataset from this project is being tapped into for research, and if things are annotated with the Host Plant and in this project - this makes exporting this data and sorting it much easier.

Rearing

You may have noticed some adult leaf miners appearing in the project. I'm happy for them to be hear WHEN they are linked to leaf mine records, i.e. have been reared out.

Whilst I'm actually finishing up on my Gracillariidae research project, a new project on Heliozelidae is on the horizon. I think any reared leaf miners (or parasitoids) are valuable, so if you're interested in rearing out leaf miners and want to contribute to research on the group, please get in contact with me and I can provide you more information. I hope to write about some success stories in the next post here.

Ian F.B. Common’s Rearing Notes

Recently I was looking through the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC) and found some of Ian F.B. Common’s rearing notes. He was one of the lepidopterists based at the ANIC, and was one of the foremost Australian lepidopterists. I don’t have the time to do an in-depth analysis of his rearing notes, but only to say if there are future leaf mining moth researchers out there, try get access to his notes, they are a treasure trove.

I’ve gone through some uploads from this project and given them tentative IDs where possible. Ian himself didn’t know the identity of many of the leaf miners, but where possible I’ve tried to link a leaf mine to what is known to mine it. This is why providing an accurate or close to accurate host plant ID is super important. I filtered all the observations according to host plant and went through each observation. As of today, I have done this for the following plant species:

Elaeocarpus obovatus
Glochidion ferdinandi

I don’t know if I’ll have time to do more – at least until ANIC is able to digitize the records. My intention is to one day do a whole lot of cross referencing with literature and the observations here.. although that is a giant task.

Happy hunting,

Ying

Hi everyone,

Wowee we're at 900+ uploads! This is amazing. As a reminder, this is the biggest source of Australian leaf miner records. I do go along and do what ID I can, but I also encourage you to investigate some leaf miners in your local area as we know so little.

For anyone interested, in February 2023 I did a talk for the Entomological Society of Victoria. I got permission to share this video and I hope it gives you some insight in Australian Leaf Miners.

Here is the link to the video

It is a talk aimed at the general public, and should be easy to understand for all. If you have any questions feel free to post here or DM me.

Take care,

Ying

Hi everyone,

Happy new year! I'm excited to see that we have hit 500 observations, this is great.

Unfortunately, so many of these remain unidentified.. there just isn't enough known about leaf miners in Australia.

If you didn't know, I'm currently doing a PhD project focusing on a group of leaf mining moths, the Gracillariidae. I'm using ecological, morphological and molecular data to determine how many species there are in Australia. I'm actually nearing the end of my data collection period, but I wanted to highlight that I will accept any leaf mines with larvae/pupae in them for the next few months. After April I will probably not accept them, as it will be a bit late for my PhD project.

So if you are interested in directly contributing to knowledge of this group in Australia, you can physically mail me leaf mines for me to rear out. Postage can be reimbursed. Please contact me if you are interested in helping me, all new records are interesting. I have been looking at all the records on this project, and annotating them where I can. I can help you with identifying if your leaf mine is an active one from this season or an old one from a previous season. If I've been commenting on your posts, it's likely you have come across mines I'm interested in studying.

You can also read the following blog posts for additional information:

List of Target Host Plants
What is a leaf miner?

Hi everyone,

As part of my research into Australian leaf miners, I'm interested in getting fresh specimens and images of leaf mines. I am interested in getting larvae in particular, as I'll be able to use them for DNA sequencing to understand more about the ecology and life history of many leaf mining species.

I've read nearly all the available literature, and have just finished compiling a list of target host plants I'm interested in. These are plants which have had gracillariid leaf miners recorded on them, but we don't quite have the full picture for that leaf miner. I might want to rear out adults, I might be interested in the larvae, or I might just want to know if they have a broader range.

If you are familiar with your local plants, do have a look at the below list and see if you recognise any plants. I would be interested in getting samples mailed to me in Canberra, and can reimburse for postage.

Australian Leaf Miner Host Plant Target List

I've included as much information as have, including time of year and photos of the mines (where possible). many of these photos are from iNaturalist, and were even part of this project - so thank you to people who have uploaded!

Happy hunting,

Ying

I'm happy to see that we now have over 40 members in this project, very exciting! :) I see that many people haven't uploaded any leaf mine images. I encourage you to look for some - I plan on writing some posts on my blog about recognising leaf mines soon. Let me know if you have any barriers to uploading leaf mines, happy to help you out if I can.

Anyway, I just wanted to promote a project that has just started: Australian Galls

If you have been on the look out for leaf mines, you may have come across some mystery galls. Well now there's a home for them. Check out the project for more info.

Happy gall hunting. 😊

It has been 55 days since I started this project, and there have been over 100 submissions from users in that time. This is so exciting!

I’m so happy to see the engagement from the iNat community. As you may or may not know, there are very few resources in Australia for understanding the leaf miners in Australia, and the contributions here are creating an invaluable resource.

Whilst activity from myself may seem low, rest assured there are people who are looking at all the submissions, and all your images are well appreciated.

For those who don't know, I am currently studying a sub-group of these leaf miners (the Gracillariidae, a moth family). I’m more than happy to receive active/pupating leaf mines at the Australian National Insect Collection. If you are happy to collect them for me from your property or somewhere where you have permission, do reach out. I am also looking at new uploads to see whether there are any leaf mines I am interested in having. I can reimburse you for your postage costs.

As this is a community project, do reach out if you have any suggestions for the project. For now I am gratefully treating this project as a resource for living leaf mine images.

I recently gave a number of talks on my project and leaf miners in general and my own project more specifically. I did make a brochure about leaf miners to give out at outreach events which I may post about some time next year.

Thanks everyone for contributing and happy holidays!