''Parornix alpicola'' 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 is known from the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...

and

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

, where it is confined to calcareous coastal hillsides on the north coast, where the only known localities are the Invernaver National Nature Reserve and a spot on the east side of

Loch Eriboll __NOTOC__ Loch Eriboll (Scottish Gaelic: "Loch Euraboil") is a long sea loch on the north coast of Scotland, which has been used for centuries as a deep water anchorage as it is safe from the often stormy seas of Cape Wrath and the Pentland Firt ...

. 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 8–10 mm. There is one generation per year. The

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. The ...

e feed on ''

Dryas octopetala ''Dryas octopetala'', the mountain avens, eightpetal mountain-avens, white dryas or white dryad, is an Arctic–alpine flowering plant in the family Rosaceae. It is a small prostrate evergreen subshrub forming large colonies. The specific epithet ...

''. 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 larvae start by making a lower-surface epidermal corridor. Next, larvae begin to feed on the sponge parenchyma and later also on the palissade parenchyhma. This causes the initial corridor to become destroyed. The final mine is full depth and occupies about half of a leaf. It is located on one side of the midrib and is almost flat. Finally, the larva leaves the mine and spins a new leaf into a pod, that is eaten from the inside.

Taxonomy

Some authors consider ''Parornix alpicola'' to be a synonym of '' Parornix scoticella''. Others argue that ''Parornix alpicola'' differs from ''scoticella'' in its much darker antenna, in having an even greater admixture of white in the pattern of the forewing and in having only the apical dot darker than the ground colour.Hants Moths
/ref> Furthermore, the Scottish population is often treated as the distinct subspecies ''leucostola''

References

Parornix Moths of Europe Moths described in 1877 {{Parornix-stub