500 observations! + Accepting leaf mines mailed to me

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?

Posted on January 9, 2023 05:48 AM by antomology antomology

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