Antispila oinophylla new species (Lepidoptera, Heliozelidae), a new North American grapevine leafminer invading Italian vineyards: taxonomy, DNA barcodes and life cycle

Abstract

A grapevine leafminer Antispila oinophylla van Nieukerken & Wagner, sp. n., is described both from eastern North America (type locality: Georgia) and as a new important invader in North Italian vineyards (Trentino and Veneto Region) since 2006. The species is closely related to, and previously confused with Antispila ampelopsifoliella Chambers, 1874, a species feeding on Virginia creeper Parthenocissus quinquefolia (L.) Planchon., and both are placed in an informal Antispila ampelopsifoliella group. Wing pattern, genitalia, and DNA barcode data all confirm the conspecificity of native North American populations and Italian populations. COI barcodes differ by only 0–1.23%, indicating that the Italian populations are recently established from eastern North America. The new species feeds on various wild Vitis species in North America, on cultivated Vitis vinifera L. in Italy, and also on Parthenocissus quinquefolia in Italy. North American Antispila feeding on Parthenocissus include at least two other species, one of which is Antispila ampelopsifoliella. Morphology and biology of the new species are contrasted with those of North American Antispila Hübner, 1825 species and European Holocacista rivillei (Stainton, 1855). The source population of the introduction is unknown, but cases with larvae or pupae, attached to imported plants, are a likely possibility. DNA barcodes of the three European grapevine leafminers and those of all examined Heliozelidae are highly diagnostic. North American Vitaceae-feeding Antispila form two species complexes and include several as yet unnamed taxa. The identity of three out of the four previously described North American Vitaceae-feeding species cannot be unequivocally determined without further revision, but these are held to be different from Antispila oinophylla. In Italy the biology of Antispila oinophylla was studied in a vineyard in the Trento Province (Trentino-Alto Adige Region) in 2008 and 2009. Mature larvae overwinter inside their cases, fixed to vine trunks or training stakes. The first generation flies in June. An additional generation occurs from mid-August onwards. The impact of the pest in this vineyard was significant with more than 90% of leaves infested in mid-summer. Since the initial discovery in 2006, the pest spread to several additional Italian provinces, in 2010 the incidence of infestation was locally high in commercial vineyards. Preliminary phylogenetic analyses suggest that Antispila is paraphyletic, and that the Antispila ampelopsifoliella group is related to Coptodisca Walsingham, 1895, Holocacista Walsingham & Durrant, 1909 and Antispilina Hering, 1941, all of which possess reduced wing venation. Vitaceae may be the ancestral hostplant family for modern Heliozelidae.

Two European Cornus L. feeding leafmining moths, Antispila petryi Martini, 1899, sp. rev. and A. treitschkiella (Fischer von Röslerstamm, 1843) (Lepidoptera, Heliozelidae): an unjustified synonymy and overlooked range expansion

“…We only prepared one pair of wings of each species (Figs 9-10) and these wings indeed support Martini´s difference, but we cannot attest to its reliability. The usefulness of venational characters at species level has been challenged in other moths such as Elachistidae (Albrecht and Kaila 1997), whereas at generic level of Heliozelidae, the larger differences in venation appear to be phylogenetically informative (van Nieukerken et al 2012b;van Nieukerken and Geertsema 2015).…”

“…Widespread in central and southern Europe, distributed further north than the other species: occurs in a few localities in southern Norway and southern Sweden, the islands Gotland and Öland, the islands of Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, southern England to Midlands, all West and Central European Countries, just in the NE of Spain (Laštůvka and Laštůvka 2015) but has not yet been recorded from Italy (the earlier record by van Nieukerken et al (2012b) was a misidentification of A. petryi), with southernmost records from Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and more eastwards Ukraine and European Russia.…”

“…The bootstrap support values from the maximum likelihood analysis are high for the genus Heliozela (100) and relatively high for Antispila s.str. (92), but low for the clade of the other four genera (58), that share a reduced venation (van Nieukerken et al 2012b). Although such low support might be expected with just DNA barcode data, the grouping of these four genera is supported by morphology and has also been observed in a recent study that used four genes (Milla et al 2017).…”

“…Since many molecular data on Heliozelidae have recently been published or will soon be published (van Nieukerken et al 2012b; van Nieukerken and Geertsema 2015;Milla et al 2017), we restrict molecular data here to European species. Neighbor Joining (NJ) trees based on DNA barcode sequences of all available specimens were prepared with tools provided by the Barcode of Life Data Systems (Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007).…”

“…Methods for preparation of the genitalia follow van Nieukerken et al (2012b). We usually embedded the total genitalia in dorso-ventral position, or removed the phallus.…”