Gelechiid micro-moth recording scheme

Post date: Mar 3, 2013 1:11:52 PM

Some of you may know that there is a national recording scheme for the micro-moths in family Gelechiidae. This is one of the trickier micro groups, with some distinctive species but also many that look very similar and often require dissection.

With much help from Steve and Carolyn Palmer, who run the national scheme, I've been checking through the Berkshire gelechiid records, in order to pass them on to the national scheme, and have also done some dissections of the gelechiids that have been sitting in my backlog of specimens for a very long time! Thanks also to Peter Hall for checking some dissections for me.

The result of all this activity is that we now have 1,775 records of 87 gelechiid species on the Berkshire database (i.e. just over half of the c. 162 gelechiids in Britain). Of these, 21 have not been recorded since 2000, and three not since 1900.

The top five most frequently recorded species are:

• Bryotropha affinis

• Bryotropha terrella

• Helcystogramma rufescens

• Scrobipalpa costella

• Brachmia blandella

The recorder who has contributed most records of gelechiids, by quite a large margin!, is Martin Corley with over 500. Others contributing over 100 records are Steve Nash, Nick Asher, Norman Hall and Graham Dennis, and around 50 people have contributed at least one record. Dissection of my own specimens revealed the first confirmed Berkshire records for Syncopacma cinctella, a relatively scarce species found at Temple Golf Course near Maidenhead.

For more about the gelechiid recording scheme see their website (which includes national distribution maps for the species), and the latest scheme newsletter (pdf download).