Three New Argyresthia Moths with Jacob Gorneau

Have you ever seen a series of fine squiggles in a leaf? Those might be leaf-mining moths in the genus Argyresthia. These tiny moths are closely linked with many agricultural crops, but factors including sampling bias and their small size mean we don’t know as much about them as we’d like. Jacob Gorneau and his team examined material from Guatemala and described three new species.

An insect-lover from childhood, Jacob has always been fascinated by moths, and these Argyresthia moths are no exception. They’re a small group both in number (with only 200 species) and in size (approximately 1/8th of an inch or smaller), but there’s a lot to learn about them, especially in relation to their host plants. Listen in as Jacob tells us all about his work, his future plans, and why we should care about these tiny animals.

Jacob Gorneau’s paper “Three new species of the genus Argyresthia Hübner, [1825] from Guatemala, with notes on host plant evolution and Nearctic taxa (Lepidoptera: Argyresthiidae)” is in Volume 51 Issue 201 of SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.57065/shilap.444

Another of Jacob’s papers mentioned in this episode - Measuring What We Don't Know: Biodiversity Catalogs Reveal Bias in Taxonomic Effort: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac116

Take a look at Jacob’s website for spiders, scorpions, and more! https://jacobgorneau.github.io/

Jacob is also part of National Moth Week: https://nationalmothweek.org/

You can follow him on twitter: @jacobgorneau

Or instagram: @fortheloveofleps

New Species: Argyresthia quetzaltenangonella, Argyresthia guatemala, Argyresthia iridescentia

Episode image courtesy of Jacob Gorneau

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Jacob Gorneau - Transcript