Liriomyza

Eiseman, Charles S. & Lonsdale, Owen, 2018, New state and host records for Agromyzidae (Diptera) in the United States, with the description of thirty new species, Zootaxa 4479 (1), pp. 1-156 : 59

Liriomyza sp. 2

( Fig. 159 )

Material examined. MASSACHUSETTS: Middlesex Co., Newton, near Waltham line, 21.vi.2014, em. by 23.vi.2014, J. F. Carr, ex Ageratina altissima , #CSE1136, CNC 384895 (1♀).

Host. Asteraceae : Ageratina altissima (L.) R.M. King & H. Rob.

Leaf mine. ( Fig. 159 ) Entirely linear; long, narrow and whitish, with very little visible frass (a few minute grains and irregular thread fragments); 1.5 mm wide at the end.

Puparium. Yellowish, formed outside the mine. The puparium of the single reared specimen was glued with black frass to the lower leaf surface, as we have observed in Liriomyza eupatoriella .

Comments. Spencer & Steyskal (1986) reported that empty mines of an unidentified agromyzid were common on A. altissima in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC in late June and early July. They stated that the mine “is long, narrow, with scarcely perceptible frass, frequently with several mines in the same leaf. It is probably caused by a Phytomyza sp.” They did not indicate how this mine differed from that of Liriomyza eupatoriella Spencer , which was reared from a “long, narrow linear mine” on the same host in Wisconsin in September, but there appears to be frass in the illustrated mine. They listed observations of empty mines of L. eupatoriella from the same dates and locations as the unidentified mines. Our impression, from examining numerous linear mines on A. altissima , is that mines with and without visible frass represent a continuum rather than two distinct categories. Our female specimen was associated with a mine that was certainly at the “scarcely perceptible frass” end of the continuum.

Based on examined specimens and published descriptions, our female differs from L. eupatoriella most noticeably in having a strong yellow stripe across the posterior margin of the scutum (not narrowly connected medially by a black extension), the calypter is widely grayish along the outer margin and the sides of the abdomen appear to be more widely yellow.

Figures

FIGURES 154–164. leaf mines; 154: Liriomyza trifolii (Burgess) in Hydrocotyle verticillata; 155: L. trifolii in Trifolium repens; 156: L. valerianivora spec. nov. in Ƒaleriana officinalis; 157: L. violivora (Spencer) in Ƒiola sp.; 158: Liriomyza sp. 1 in Maianthemum canadense; 159: Liriomyza sp. 2 in Ageratina altissima; 160: Liriomyza sp. 3 in Bidens frondosa; 161: Liriomyza sp. 4 in Cirsium altissimum; 162: Liriomyza sp. 5 in Mikania scandens; 163: Liriomyza sp. 8 in Campanula americana (mine is the whitish line along the midrib); 164: Liriomyza sp. 9 in Pisum sativum.