![]() | Sweet Potato Leaf Miner (one synonym: Bedellia ipomoeae Bradley, 1953) BEDELLIINAE, LYONETIIDAE, YPONOMEUTOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
Drawing by John William Douglas,
XXII: Contributions to the Natural History of British Microlepidoptera,
Transactions of the Entomological Society of London,
New Series, Volume 2 (1852-1853), Plate XVII, fig. 1a,
image courtesy of
Biodiversity Heritage Library,
digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.
These Caterpillars are off-white with a dark line along the back, and a slight brown bulge on the side of each abdominal segment. The head is brown. The caterpillars feed by mining the leaves of various members of the Bindweed and Sweet Potato family (CONVOLVULACEAE) , eg:
The adult moths are fawn with a hairy head and thorax, and fringes of hairs on the trailing edge of each forewing, and around the whole of each hindwing. The antennae are nearly as long as the forewings. The moths have a wingspan of about 1 cm.
The eggs are laid singly on the upper surface of a leaf of a foodplant.
The species is found all over the world, for example:
as well as in Australia including
Further reading :
Ian F.B. Common,
Moths of Australia,
Melbourne University Press, 1990, fig. 21.12, p. 215.
John William Douglas,
XXII Contributions to the Natural History of British Microlepidoptera,
Transactions of the Entomological Society of London,
New Series, Volume 2 (1852-1853), pp. 208-209, No. 432, and
Plate 17, fig. 1.
Philipp C. Zeller,
Bemerkungen über die auf einer Reise nach Italien und Sicilien beobachteten Schmetterlingsarten,
Isis von Oken,
Jena, Volume 40, Heft 12 (1847), pp. 894-895, No. 432.
![]() caterpillar | ![]() butterflies | ![]() Lepidoptera | ![]() imagoes | ![]() caterpillar |
(updated 15 August 2011, 10 February 2025)