| | Insects of Britain and Ireland: the genus Phyllonorycter (Lepidoptera-Gracillariidae) |
Synonym: Phyllonorycter klemannella (misspelling)
Associated with trees. On Betulaceae; Alnus.
Larvae. The larvae mining in leaves; in the under-side. Found in July, or September to October. The larva pupating in a morphologically distinct cocoon.
Pupa. The pupal cremaster with two pairs of hooked processes; two pairs of cremastal processes more or less equal in length; cremastal processes relatively short and basally broad (the outer stouter).
Adults. Face coloured (brassy). Head orange. Thorax brown; shining-metallic; brassy. Wing-span 7–9 mm. Forewings shining brownish orange (or ochreous orange); not clear shining white; without a basal streak; with well defined pale strigulae (these white, paired). Costal strigulae 4. The fasciae and strigulae inwardly sharply dark-edged. Dorsal strigulae 4. Forewings with two transverse pale fasciae (via coalescence of the first two pairs of strigulae, which are indistinguishable as entities); with two costal spots beyond the second fascia. Forewings with conspicuous dark apical marking. Forewing apical marking comprising a round blackish apical spot. The forewing fringe narrowly dark-lined along the bases of the cilia. The forewing basal fringe line confined to the apical region or fading dorsally (fading dorsally). Hindwing cilia fuscous.
The left and right male genital valvae similar in size and form (narrowly elongate-pointed). The left male genital valva pointed but not spine-tipped. The left and right male genital valvae without free costae. The aedeagus long and relatively slender with a triangular barb towards the apex. The female genitalia exhibiting a signum on the bursa copulatrix (minute, pointed).
Adults abroad May and August.
Illustrations. • Phyllonorycter kleemannella: Jacobs (1945). • Phyllonorycter species on Alder. 1, Phyllonorycter strigulatella; 2, P. stettinensis; 3, P. froelichiella; 4, P. kleemannella. Representation of the foodplant (Alder, Alnus glutinosa) from Sowerby and Johnson. • P. kleemannella (as klemannella) and 5 other species: Hübner, 1796–1819. • Phyllonorycter kleemannella, genitalia: Pierce and Metcalfe (1935).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the genus Phyllonorycter (Lepidoptera-Gracillariidae) Version: 14th April 2022. delta-intkey.com’.
