Phyllocnistis ramulicola, Langmaid & Corley, 2007

Voith, Reidar J. D. I., Aarvik, Leif, Berggren, Kai, Bengtsson, Bengt Åke, Hellberg, Hasse, Mutanen, Marko, Slagsvold, Per Kristian & Wieser, Christian, 2023, Taxonomy of the Phyllocnistis saligna (Zeller, 1839) complex (Lepidoptera, Gracillariidae) in North and Central Europe, with the description of a new species, Norwegian Journal of Entomology 70, pp. 10-28 : 26

Remarks on Phyllocnistis ramulicola

Examined material. 1♂, UNITED KINGDOM, Hampshire: Havant Thicket , mine on Salix cinerea L., IX.2007 , leg. J. R. Langmaid, coll. NHMO .

Molecular diagnosis. Ph. ramulicola with BIN: BOLD:AAL5481 forms a distinct cluster with the nearest neighbour being BIN: BOLD: AAZ7400 with a p-distance of 2.73 %. No specimens of BIN: BOLD:AAZ7400 which may represent another undescribed species are accessible to us. Intraspecific variability of Ph. ramulicola is 0.48 %. In the phylogenetic tree ( Figure 18 ), Ph. ramulicola is associated with the species feeding on Populus spp. , although this association is only poorly supported.

Observations on biology. Bred from Salix cinerea in England ( Langmaid & Corley 2007) and from S. euxina in the Czech Republic ( Liška et al. 2018). Information from the BOLD database gives S. atrocinerea Brot. As a food-plant in France and S. melanopsis Nutt. And S. pentandra L. as food-plants in the Czech Republic. Data on the life history from the description of the species ( Langmaid & Corley 2007): «Larval mine. From the oviposition site on the stem, at first either upwards or downwards, the downward-directed mines then turning upwards after a variable distance, sometimes crossing or coalescing with the earlier part of the track or the mines of other larvae and sometimes turning abruptly sideways to continue mining on the other side of the stem; finally, up the petiole of a leaf, ending at the leafbase where the cocoon is spun. The mine is at first greenish ochreous, soon turning ochreous whitish and becoming whiter with age.».

Distribution. England, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland ( Langmaid & Corley 2007, Liška et al. 2018).

Figures

FIGURE 18. A Maximum Likelihood tree of 478 specimens and 13 species or putative species of Phyllocnistis Zeller, 1848, of which 12 represents the clade associated with Salicaceae plants. The tree was rooted on Ph. citrella Stainton, 1856. The node confidence was estimated based on 500 bootstrap pseudoreplicates. In general, BS support values for deeper nodes are relatively low, highlighting that phylogenetic relationships between species should be considered as tentative.Species form highly supported clusters except for the Ph. labyrinthella/ populiella/xenia complex, which all belong to the same BIN and show rather minor genetic divergences.