Fern spore feeding records of Cuprininae moth (Stathmopodidae) in Tengping, Taiwan

https://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=mothhostassociations Fern spore feeding records of Cuprininae moth (Stathmopodidae) in Tengping, Taiwan Yu-Chia Wang National Tsinghua University Investigator

Li-Yaung Kuo National Tsinghua Univeristy PI

Li-Yaung Kuo National Tsinghua University PI lykuo@life.nthu.edu.tw user 2025-05-14 eng Spore feeding is considered one of the earliest forms of herbivory in insects, and it has been proposed that pollination may have indirectly evolved from this ancestral trait. In extant insects, spore feeding primarily involves consuming the spores of ferns, a behavior known as fern-spore feeding (FSF). The most representative clade exhibiting FSF is the subfamily Cuprininae (Stathmopodidae), whose larvae feed exclusively on fern spores. However, detailed knowledge of the feeding habits and host associations within Cuprininae remains limited. In this study, we applied a metabarcoding approach to identify the larvae of FSF insects collected from our study site in subtropical forest and to reconstruct the associations between Cuprininae species and their respective fern hosts. By establishing more robust species-host links, our findings provide critical insights into the ecological specialization and evolutionary history of spore-feeding insects. This work also contributes to understanding how early herbivorous traits may have shaped subsequent insect-plant interactions. Occurrence Moth Cuprininae Stathmopodidae Fern Spore-feeding GBIF Dataset Type Vocabulary: http://rs.gbif.org/vocabulary/gbif/dataset_type_2015-07-10.xml This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License. Tengping Trail, Emei Township, Hsinchu County 121.006 121.043 24.659 24.63 continually Yu-Chia Wang National Tsinghua University Investigator

Monthly field sampling in Tengping trail and metabarcoding A two-year monthly field sampling in Tengping trail A two-year monthly field sampling in Tengping trail 2025-05-14T07:04:25.133+00:00 dataset Wang Y, Kuo L (2025). Fern spore feeding records of Cuprininae moth (Stathmopodidae) in Tengping, Taiwan. Version 1.0. Institute of Molecular & Cellular Biology, National Tsing Hua University. Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.taibif.tw/resource?r=mothhostassociations&v=1.0