Tischerioidea is the superfamily of "trumpet"

leaf miner A leaf miner is any one of numerous species of insects in which the larval stage lives in, and eats, the leaf tissue of plants. The vast majority of leaf-mining insects are moths ( Lepidoptera), sawflies ( Symphyta, the mother clade of wasp ...

moths. The superfamily contains just one family, Tischeriidae, and traditionally one

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

, '' Tischeria'', but currently three genera are recognised, widespread around the world including South America (Davis, 1986), except for Australasia (Puplesis and Diskus, 2003). This is one candidate as the sister group (see also Palaephatoidea) of the bulk of Lepidoptera, the

Ditrysia The Ditrysia are a natural group or clade of insects in the lepidopteran order containing both butterflies and moths. They are so named because the female has two distinct sexual openings: one for mating, and the other for laying eggs (in contr ...

(Davis, 1999; Wiegmann ''et al.'', 2002), and they have a

monotrysia The Monotrysia are a group of moths in the lepidopteran order, not currently considered to be a natural group or clade. Apart from the recently discovered family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinit ...

n type of female reproductive system. These small moths are leaf-miners in the caterpillar stage, feeding mainly on Fagaceae (''Tischeria'' and ''Coptotriche''),

Asteraceae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...

, and

Malvaceae Malvaceae, or the mallows, is a family of flowering plants estimated to contain 244 genera with 4225 known species. Well-known members of economic importance include okra, cotton, cacao and durian. There are also some genera containing familiar ...

(''Astrotischeria''), and some also on Rhamnaceae, Tiliaceae, and Rosaceae.Natural History Museum
/ref>

References

*Davis D.R. (1986). A new family of monotrysian moth from austral South America (Lepidoptera: Palaephatidae), with a phylogenetic review of the Monotrysia. ''Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology'', 434: 1-202. *Davis, D.R. (1999). The Monotrysian Heteroneura. Ch. 6, pp. 65–90 in Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). ''Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies''. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. Handbuch der Zoologie. Eine Naturgeschichte der Stämme des Tierreiches / Handbook of Zoology. A Natural History of the phyla of the Animal Kingdom. Band / Volume IV Arthropoda: Insecta Teilband / Part 35: 491 pp. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York. *Puplesis, R. & Diskus,A. (2003). ''The Nepticuloidea and Tischerioidea (Lepidoptera) - a Global Review with Strategic Regional Revisions''. 512 pp. Apollo books. . *Wiegmann, B.M., Regier, J.C. and Mitter, C. (2002). Combined molecular and morphological evidence on the phylogeny of the earliest lepidopteran lineages. ''Zoologica Scripta'', 31(1): 67-81.

Sources

*''Firefly Encyclopedia of Insects and Spiders'', edited by Christopher O'Toole, , 2002

External links

Detailed description and figures including wing venation.
UK MothsWorld overviewNatural History Museum Hosts database
U.S.A. (Nearctic) {{Taxonbar, from=Q1189692 Lepidoptera superfamilies Leaf miners