Highly invasive horse-chestnut leaf miner found living in the Balkans by 1879

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21 June 2011 Freie Universitaet Berlin

Scientists discover ancient caterpillars in herbaria, new facts about origin

The horse-chestnut leaf miner was living on native stands of the horse-chestnut in Greece by 1879 and was already present in the Balkans more than a century before its scientific description. The present study by an international and interdisciplinary team around David Lees (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, France and Natural History Museum, London) and H. Walter Lack (Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin) is based on herbarium analysis. They resolve a two decade-long debate about origin and invasion of the horse-chestnut leaf miner. A Balkan origin for this leaf-mining moth is now certain. Results are now published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the scientific journal of the Ecological Society of America.

Known timeline of the horse-chestnut leaf miner invasion

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