Leafminers of North America

I just finished reviewing all of the observations that had been identified as Tischeria quercitella. Most of the images of adults were not actually this species; the majority were at least tischeriids, but there were also gelechioids, pyraloids, microcaddisflies, etc. But of course what I want to focus on here are the leaf mines.

All of the "leaf mines" were at least on oak leaves, but the majority were not mines at all. Most often the photos showed window-feeding, leaftying, skeletonizing, or other types of external feeding by sawfly larvae, non-tischeriid moth larvae, or (usually) not identifiable beyond Pterygota. One of my previous posts goes into detail about what is and is not a leaf mine.

Among the actual leaf mines, the vast majority (maybe 95%) were Cameraria. There were also occasional Phyllonorycter, Profenusa, Coptotriche, and actual Tischeria quercitella mines, along with things that weren't insect feeding at all, like disease spots or in one case a picture of a lichen on a branch that happened to be in front of some oak leaves.

The banner image on my website is a T. quercitella mine--very distinctive! At this moment all of the leaf mines (but maybe not all of the adults) shown here should also be T. quercitella. Please spread the word about this journal post; it's a bit tiresome to keep seeing T. quercitella used as a catch-all category for any kind of damage to oak leaves, or miscellaneous little non-descript moths and caddisflies! less ↑