Monday, 22 October 2012

Early stages: Strophedra weirana

Another often overlooked and under recorded species can be found in its larval stage on Beech right now.  The feeding signs are quite obvious, so one worth keeping an eye out for.

Larval feeding signs
Strophedra weirana larval feeding signs

Larva in opened spinning
Strophedra weirana larva in spinning on Beech

Monday, 15 October 2012

Early stage excesses

To say that the last few weeks have been productive in terms of early stage finds - mainly leaf miners but also cases and galls - would be an understatement.

Whilst we all seem to have suffered a dearth of adults to the traps this year, with tales of crashes in numbers of usually abundant species becoming clear as we all start to analyse the 2012 figures in detail, here in East Kent I am falling over early stages at every turn.

By way of illustration, here are some figures from the last 15 days i.e. October so far:

213 out of 320 total records (66%) are for early stages
4907 out of 5160 total individuals(95%) are for early stages
75 species recorded as early stages

The most abundant early stages are:
Phyllonorycter coryli - 1126 mines
P. platani- 1505 mines
P. corylifoliella - 355 mines

Other finds include Phyllocnistis xenia, Stigmella aceris, Bucculatrix thoracella, Phyllonorycter platanoidella, Coleophora laricella, Ectoedemia heringella, Parornix fagivora, Strophedra weirana

Phyllocnistis xenia
Phyllocnistis xenia leaf mine

Stigmella aceris
Stigmella aceris leaf mine on Acer campestre

Parornix devoniella
Parornix devoniella leaf mine and fold

Stigmella microtheriella Stigmella microtheriella larva in leaf mine on Hazel

Dave

Sunday, 7 October 2012

Miners, miners everywhere

The profusion of leaf miners is still very much in evidence; just this last week have totalled around 2000 individuals of a wide range of species from many food plants. Here's a few of the latest finds:

 Stigmella tityrella
 Stigmella tityrrella mine

Parornix fagivora
Parornix fagivora -  leaf fold (3) Parornix fagivora -  leaf fold (2)

Bucculatrix thoracella
 Bucculatrix thoracella minesBucculatrix thoracella mines (2)

Stigmella basiguttella 
Stigmella basiguttella