Abstract
Developing methods to rear phytophagous insects is crucial to reveal the true complexity of interactions between insects and their host plants. Here we focus on leaf-mining insects, an ecological guild across four different orders (Lepidoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, and Hymenoptera) whose larvae feed inside the leaves of their host plants, producing cavities in the leaf tissue that are known as leaf mines. Besides leaf lamina, some leaf-mining species can also mine leaf petioles and veins, and a few species make cavities in soft shoots, stems, or mine the surface of young fruits and seeds. Most leaf miners are host plant-specific and produce characteristic leaf mines that are remarkably variable among species. Some species are considered important crop, orchard, and forest pests. Despite their fascinating life history, global diversity, and ecological and economic importance, little is known about the biology of most species, in particular in the tropics. Here, we describe methods to collect, rear, and preserve samples of leaf miners with an emphasis on the smallest of Lepidoptera.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Camiel Doorenweerd and Erik Van Nieukerken (the Netherlands), Charley Eiseman and John Tooker (USA), Atsushi Kawakita (Japan), David Lees (UK), Sylvain Pincebourde (France), and Ayco Tack (Sweden) for insightful comments on the manuscript. CLV was funded by Centre d’Etude de la Biodiversité Amazonienne (CEBA) (project LEAFMINE) and a Fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and visiting researcher of Kyoto Prefectural University, Japan (2014). NK contribution was partially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) (project no. 19-04-01029-a). IO was funded in part by JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers 04J09250, 08J05555, 26840120, and 17H06260 and Bilateral Joint Research Project between CNRS and JSPS.
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Lopez-Vaamonde, C., Kirichenko, N., Ohshima, I. (2021). Collecting, Rearing, and Preserving Leaf-Mining Insects. In: Santos, J.C., Fernandes, G.W. (eds) Measuring Arthropod Biodiversity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53226-0_17
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