''Cremastobombycia lantanella'', the lantana leaf miner, is a

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

of the family

Gracillariidae Gracillariidae is an important family of insects in the order Lepidoptera and the principal family of leaf miners that includes several economic, horticultural or recently invasive pest species such as the horse-chestnut leaf miner, ''Cameraria ...

. It was first described by

August Busck Augustus Busck (February 18, 1870 – March 7, 1944) was a Danish-American entomologist with the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Entomology. He is best known for his work with microlepidoptera, of which he described over ...

in 1910. It is native to the southern United States (including

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

) and

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. It was introduced to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

in 1902 to aid in the control of ''

Lantana ''Lantana'' () is a genus of about 150 species of perennial flowering plants in the verbena family, Verbenaceae. They are native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa but exist as an introduced species in numerous areas, especially in ...

'' plants. The

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

is about 7 mm. Adults are very light brown with whitish bars on the forewings. The larvae feed on ''

'' species, including '' L. urticoides'', '' L. urticifolia'', '' L. hispida'', '' L. hirsuta'' and '' L. camara''. They

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

the leaves of their host plant. The mine consists of a large bulged or inflated mine on the leaf, equally visible on both sides of the leaf. There may be as many as twenty larvae per leaf. The larvae are pale green. Pupation takes place in a white, spindle-shaped ribbed cocoon of about 5 mm long which is suspended in the mine by a silken thread attached at each end.

External links

* Lithocolletinae Leaf miners {{Lithocolletinae-stub Moths of North America Lepidoptera of the United States Lepidoptera of Mexico Taxa named by August Busck Moths described in 1910