It's not at all clear to me from that document why this species would be considered a pest. There is no mention of VSC, which I haven't heard of before.

Since you're looking at a lot of redbud seedpods, I'm curious what you think of this discussion/interpretation of the mines that sometimes occur in them: www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Oh, never mind, I figured it out.

Sure enough! Wonder what it all means.

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But the few bark mines I have seen on any kind of chestnut have been Marmara sp.

The type series of Ectoedemia castaneae, now considered a synonym, supposedly was reared from galls on chestnut, but no one has seen them--or reared it from chestnut--since 1913 or whenever that was. The thinking is that the larvae actually made bark mines on the twig that had the galls.

I do it from time to time. Not sure how often it sticks.

That is a terribly unfortunate common name for a moth that feeds on both oak and chestnut, and is one of numerous moths that do so. One of the chestnut specialists would be more deserving of it, but I don't think any ambiguous common names are useful.

Cool, thanks! I'll see if I have any better pics. The specimen is at the CNC, where Jose Fernandez-Triana will hopefully look at it eventually.

I was wondering if that dark object visible in the thorax in your previous photos was a parasitoid...

I just got an ID on that mordellid a couple of weeks ago. Now I have to see about the braconid I reared from it! I think that as stem borers, mordellid larvae often find themselves passing through galls, as do Melanagromyza larvae.

Yes, seems pretty mothy, which is why I asked about prolegs.

Are there definitely no abdominal prolegs?

Huh. I missed that genus change.

That would be a little weird, since he didn't write that on any of his other labels.

But I was also thinking that looks more like an "L"