iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This moth wants to know what its host plant is!

Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

These purplish midribs of smooth aster (Symphyotrichum laeve) leaves are caused by mining of Ophiomyia astericosta (Agromyzidae), a species I named with Owen Lonsdale earlier this year. Never noticed them in my yard until just now!

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

It just showed up in my yard yesterday for the very first time

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I just put together a wish list of North American Phyllocnistis leaf mines. I'm hoping for larvae from each of them for DNA barcoding, and eventually I'll need reared adult specimens to describe the ones that are new species (which is probably most of them): www.inaturalist.org/projects/lea...

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

First leafminer I've seen this year! This is a larva of Aulagromyza cornigera (Agromyzidae) almost done mining a leaf of honeyberry (Lonicera caerulea) in Massachusetts. Probably tomorrow it will drop to the ground and pupate, emerging as an adult next April. #FlyWeek

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Happy #FlyWeek! If you're in northeastern North America, please keep an eye out for this mystery leafminer on hackberry--an Agromyza species that has never been reared. Larvae are present only in spring, and rearing adults will require keeping puparia happy until next spring.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Huh. No image preview? Well, here's one:

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Okay, another one from the same series, which mysteriously has the same date but clearly "90" rather than "91"... but my main question is, cranberry *what*? Oh, I see--"Tortrix."

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

What do we think, does that say "N.J." at the top? No other labels on this moth specimen. Mary Murtfeldt was born in NYC but every publication of hers I've seen involves observations from Missouri, which is definitely where she was based in 1891.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

A well-loved bunchberry plant (Cornus canadensis) with leaf mines of Phytomyza agromyzina (lower left), Antispila cornifoliella (other linear mines), Antispila freemani (big blotches), and a Caloptilia sp. (narrow blotch and leaf roll at right), as well as stippling from leafhopper feeding.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Ah yes, "gall nuts," the common name universally used for the genus Quercus...

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Three larvae of Cameraria guttifinitella (Gracillariidae), all tucked in for the winter in their cozy circular silk chambers in a poison ivy leaf.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

I have a recurring problem where I can't get rid of the Search Results box when viewing a PDF in @adobe.com Acrobat. Anyone know how to fix this? Also, any way I can make everything AI-related go away, completely and forever?

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

The label goes with this mating pair of Antispila nysaefoliella, collected in the late 1800s by William Dietz.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

What's my best option for a low- (or no- ?) cost open-access journal, with quick turnaround, for a short paper on insect taxonomy?

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Just escorted this redstart out of my garage.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Beetles of the Brachys aerosus complex (Buprestidae) reared from leaf mines on 16 different host plants.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Here's an adult I reared from a similar mine I collected in Kansas ten years ago.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Going a little overboard illustrating my paper on rearing records for eulophid wasps. Here are females (left) and males of Chrysocharis polita, C. polyzo, C. prodice, and C. pubicornis, all reared from leafminers. Each is about 1 mm long.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Found a dead moth in a cryptically labelled bag of leaves yesterday and decided to use it for dissection practice. It appears to be the "batman moth" (Tortricidae: Coelostathma discopunctana); no idea where it came from.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Thought this was a nice scene: an orbweaver (probably Araniella displicata) has spun its web across the gap in a scrub oak leaf produced by a caterpillar's feeding, and there are some Coptodisca leaf mines at upper right (one aborted, one with feeding larva, and one with pupal case already cut out).

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Comparison of the nondescript (but consistently distinguishable) blotch mines of Cameraria (a gracillariid moth, L) and Profenusa (a tenthredinid sawfly, R) on scrub oak. If you look closely there's also a mine of another moth at the edge of the left leaf (Nepticulidae: Stigmella saginella group).

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Hard to capture with a phone, but one of my very favorite things is the way some gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) like to hang by their front legs from spider webs.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

Dolerus sp. sawfly larva munching on field horsetail (Equisetum arvense), 8/16/2024.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

Evening dewdrops on jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), 8/14/2024.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

This looks like a cozy place to live: a gall of Phylloteras poculum (Cynipidae) on dwarf chestnut oak (Quercus prinoides). This wasp was originally described as a midge (Cecidomyia poculum), back when you could get away with describing a species based only on the gall it causes. Those were the days.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Some more mutants. Partridgeberry (Rubiaceae: Mitchella repens) normally has four-petaled flowers in pairs (giving rise to a single fruit), but here are two views of a single five-petaled flower, and one of a single seven-petaled flower.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

A mutant intermediate wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia).

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Sawfly eggs on a gray birch leaf, found in my yard back in May.

A leaf with numerous oblong, whitish eggs laid end to end along the midrib and lateral veins.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Here's one of the adult wasps that emerged the following spring.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Each eulophid larva saved up all of its poop until it was done feeding inside the moth larva, then popped out and used its meconium to construct a series of pillars that separate the ceiling and floor of the mine, protecting the pupa from getting crushed by the leaf as it dries.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Things you can do with your poop when you live inside an oak leaf. The big, circular spot is where a Cameraria larva deposited all of its frass throughout its life, and it would have spun its cocoon there, had it not been parasitized by four eulophid larvae, whose pupae are along the perimeter...

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

First North American record of Australopericoma dissimilis (Psychodidae), and presumably the first live photo of this species too.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Finally starting to go through all the photos I took this year. Here's an adult of Eucosmophora pithecellobiae (Gracillariidae) that emerged in February; possibly the first time this species has been photographed alive, or at all.

A tiny moth with long antennae and narrow brown wings with an orange splotch in the middle.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Just finished updating my key to mines on oak leaves—now with 150 couplets. This white oak leaf has mines of three different moth larvae: a Stigmella at upper left, a Cameraria (bethunella complex) at right, and a Phyllonorycter at the bottom.

A leaf with three separate leaf mines, contrastingly whitish against the surrounding green and red background: at upper left a linear mine with black central frass line; at right a lobed blotch with most of the frass in a dark central spot; at the bottom a "tentiform" mine that is spotted due to the larva feeding mostly in the lower (spongy) mesophyll.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Rearing leafminers to adults usually helps to clarify things, but things seem to get murkier with each nepticulid moth reared from an oak leaf. I know this larva is Stigmella saginella because its DNA said so...

A whitish linear leaf mine with frass in a black central line, on a leaf mottled with yellow, red, and green.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Phew! My 234 vials of alysiine braconid wasps that I reared from agromyzid flies over the past 12 years have just completed their mysterious 20-day journey from the Heathrow airport to Oxford University (a 1-hour trip according to Google). Among them, this parasitoid of Phytomyza tarnwoodensis.

Photo of a tiny wasp on a plain white background.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

I mainly study leaf-mining insects, and more generally tracks and signs of insects and other invertebrates (I wrote a book with that title), which I guess makes me an invertebrate neoichnologist.

Labyrinth-like leaf mine of the moth Phyllocnistis populiella (Gracillariidae) in a quaking aspen leaf.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 26/09/2024

Congratulations to the other award winners, Adriana Corrales, Flavia Montaño-Centellas, Timothy J. Colston, and Zhengyang Wang! You can read a little about everyone's work on the Foundation's website. www.maxwell-hanrahan.org/award/charle...

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 26/09/2024

A huge thanks to the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation for this award in recognition of my work on leafminers! It will allow me to devote more time to making and sharing new discoveries about these and other underappreciated herbivorous insects.

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 29/03/2024

A few of the 200+ species of leaf-mining beetles that occur in the USA & Canada. All the ones shown here are hispines (Chrysomelidae: Cassidinae: Chalepini); there are also leafminers in other groups of Chrysomelidae, as well as jewel beetles (Buprestidae) and weevils (Curculionoidea).

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 20/03/2024

Leafminer course in Maine this summer! For more information, see: www.eaglehill.us/programs/sem...

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 05/02/2024

I had to change the names of a dozen sawflies and a spider. bugtracks.wordpress.com/2024/02/04/t...

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Charley Eiseman @ceiseman.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

What I've been up to lately: bugtracks.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/a...

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