Eriocraniidae is a family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 of 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...

s restricted to the Holarctic

Holarctic

The Holarctic ecozone refers to the habitats found throughout the northern continents of the world as a whole. This region is divided into the Palearctic, consisting of Northern Africa and all of Eurasia, with the exception of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and the Nearctic,...

 region, with seven extant genera. These small, metallic moths are usually day-flying, emerging fairly early in the northern temperate Spring. They have a proboscis

Proboscis

A proboscis is an elongated appendage from the head of an animal, either a vertebrate or an invertebrate. In simpler terms, a proboscis is the straw-like mouth found in several varieties of species.-Etymology:...

 with which they drink water or sap. The larvae are leaf miner

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...

s on Fagales

Fagales

The Fagales are an order of flowering plants, including some of the best known trees. The order name is derived from genus Fagus, Beeches. They belong among the rosid group of dicotyledons...

, principally the trees birch (Betula) and oak (Quercus) but a few on Salicales and Rosales

Rosales

Rosales is an order of flowering plants. It is one of the four orders in the nitrogen fixing clade of the fabids and is sister to a clade consisting of Fagales and Cucurbitales. It contains about 7700 species, distributed into about 260 genera. Rosales comprises nine families, the type family...

.

External links

• Tree of Life
• Fauna Europaea
• http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/research-curation/projects/butmoth/GenusList3.dsml?searchPageURL=index.dsml&SUPERFAMIL=&FAMILYqtype=starts+with&FAMILY=Eriocraniidae&SUBFAMILYqtype=starts+with&SUBFAMILY=&TRIBEqtype=starts+with&TRIBE=&SUBTRIBEqtype=starts+with&SUBTRIBE=&GENUSqtype=starts+with&GENUS=&AUTHORqtype=starts+with&AUTHOR=&YEARqtype=equals&YEAR=&sort=GENUSGeneric Names and their Type-species]
• British moth Leaf Mines