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Photo#1804339
St. Andrews leaf miner on Quercus virginiana SA1708 Coptotriche adult 2020 1 - Coptotriche

St. Andrews leaf miner on Quercus virginiana SA1708 Coptotriche adult 2020 1 - Coptotriche
Laurinburg, Scotland County, North Carolina, USA
March 9, 2020
adult had emerged a while ago, but I only discovered it on 4/23/2020--it was moldy--not sure if this could be salvageable...

Images of this individual: tag all
St. Andrews leaf miner on Quercus virginiana SA1708 Coptotriche adult 2020 1 - Coptotriche St. Andrews leaf miner on Quercus virginiana SA1708 Coptotriche adult 2020 3 - Coptotriche

Moved
Moved from Unidentified Leaf Mines.

Doesn't look too good, but we'll give it a shot. It would help to see what the mine looked like.

 
I dissected this one...
...and it's a female, which makes it harder to ID by genitalia because all the distinctions in Braun's key are relative rather than absolute. I'll try some of the others reared from Q. virginiana a little later, and hopefully there are some males, but C. simulata seems to be the best match at this point. If this is a described species, C. concolor and C. clemensella would be the only other candidates based on the mine type, and the genitalia rule those out. The way the mine consistently starts at the midrib seems odd for any of these three, so it may well be an undescribed species.

 
Thanks for the update... I'l
Thanks for the update... I'll see if I can find more this spring. I feel like there have been at least a few adults over the years, but I am not sure how many offhand, or if we have enough to describe a species if it turns out to be new.