Greetings from Aton Forest! I came here to present a slideshow this afternoon about the leafminers of Aton Forest, but I arrived earlier in the day so I could spend a few hours looking for, well, l…

gumhead from Cochise County, AZ, USA on March 2, 2017 at 03:17 PM by Charley Eiseman

I don’t remember when I first became aware of reports that the grape (Vitaceae: Vitis) leafminer Phyllocnistis vitegenella (Gracillariidae) had been introduced in Europe. There is no mention …

I just discovered that my third paper in the open-access journal Insecta Mundi was published a few days ago: Eiseman, Charles S. and Jean-François Landry. 2026. Two new species of Keiferia Busck (L…

This revision of The Plant-Feeding Gall Midges of North America, originally published in 1989, began as soon as the earlier book was in press. Since then, more than half again as many records of plant...

The other day, Sonja Scheffer wrote to invite me to collaborate on a paper she’s working on involving agromyzid flies that mine leaves of lupines (Fabaceae: Lupinus spp.). It will, among othe…

Insects from Riverview, FL, USA on June 21, 2026 at 06:42 AM by Ryan Callahan

Just before Julia and Ayla left for Ohio a week ago today, Ayla (now three years old) picked a bunch of (mostly) sweet William flowers (Caryophyllaceae: Dianthus barbatus), which have been sitting …

Northern Parula from Manhattan, New York, NY, USA on May 11, 2026 at 05:30 PM by David Jeffrey Ringer. raiding leafmines of Profenusa canadensis on hawthorn (images in reverse chronological order)

Phytomyza verbenae in May 2026 by Ryan Donnelly. Host Verbena californica (CRPR 1B.1, Federally Threatened, State Threatened)

Phytomyza nemophilae from Building 3, Portland, OR 97229, USA on May 4, 2026 at 02:00 PM by Tser

Winged and Once-winged Insects from Ranga Reddy, IN-TG, IN on June 6, 2025 at 07:01 AM by Pavansai. Observed this on a bark of a tree

This is the twenty-ninth entry in an ongoing series profiling the amazing identifiers of iNaturalist. An iNaturalist observation records an encounter between an observer and an organism or recent evid...

Although I have essentially no formal entomological training, I have been involved in the describing and naming of many new insect species with various taxonomist collaborators, and I have recently…

Having a moon rock may not be illegal, but getting one almost certainly is.

Telamoptilia malvavisci from 1246 Lakeside Blvd, Brownsville, TX 78520, USA on February 22, 2021 at 06:47 PM by David Jeffrey Ringer. Telamoptilia cf. hibiscivora per Charley Eiseman. Reared from a m...

Thanks to the fact that I have a searchable email account, and never delete any emails, I was able to quickly reconstruct this timeline just now: On August 1, 2007, I got a reply from Mark Allison,…

Ever since I found Marmara leaf mines on the undersides of tall blue lettuce (Asteraceae: Lactuca biennis) leaves in my yard five years ago (see this post, #164), I’ve been peeking under leav…

Peer-reviewed research - An initial assessment of risk to pollinators from mosquito control in residential settings

Cameraria from Greenville County, SC, USA on June 20, 2025 at 03:36 PM by Grace Merkert

I’ve just finished putting together the wall calendar that my most generous patrons receive as a thank-you gift each year. As usual, I will also send a copy to anyone who makes a donation of at lea…

When it rains, it pours! Two days after I posted here about the newly named species Earomyia veratri, another paper of mine has just been published, describing another new fly species. This one is …

For the past decade, I have been trying to rear an unknown species of Liriomyza (Agromyzidae) that mines leaves of false hellebore (Melanthiaceae: Veratrum viride). The mines are very scarce consid…

Back in March, as I was updating my chapter on the plant order Myrtales in Leafminers of North America, I was reminded of a strange little moth that Thomas Irvine had reared four years earlier (in …

Phyllocnistis from Arnes Airstrip (YNR), Arnes, MB R0C 0C0, Canada on July 15, 2025 at 07:41 PM by Séraphin Poudrier

Curved-horn Moths from Cochise County, AZ, USA on August 28, 2022 at 10:53 AM by Ethan

Every month, I take a break from whatever it is I do with the rest of my time, and I spend a few days updating another chapter of Leafminers of North America (now 1700+ pages into the third edition…

Animals from Comox-Strathcona, British Columbia, Canada on June 26, 2025 at 01:46 PM by Randal. On ulva

Trumpet Creeper Leafminer from Balls Neck Rd, Heathsville, VA, US on June 17, 2025 at 10:17 AM by Anne Parker

Winged and Once-winged Insects from Sitka County, US-AK, US on June 4, 2025 at 12:40 PM by M. Goff