Acrocercops strigosa
Encyclopedia
Acrocercops strigosa is a moth
Moth
A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the Gracillariidae
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 ohridella....

 family. It is known from Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 (Kentucky, North Carolina, Maine and Vermont).

The larva
Larva
A larva 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...

e feed on Quercus alba and Quercus prinus. They mine
Leaf miner
Leaf miner is a term used to describe the larvae of many different species of insect which live in and eat the leaf tissue of plants. The vast majority of leaf-mining insects are moths , sawflies and flies , though some beetles and wasps also exhibit this behavior.Like Woodboring beetles, leaf...

the leaves of their host plant. The mine starts as a white gallery, which suddenly expands into a very large whitish blotch.
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