Carlos Lopez Vaamonde

• Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR), University Orléans France 2012
• Entomologist at French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE)

The focus of this study has been to understand the evolutionary relationships and taxonomy of a widely distributed parapatric species pair of wild silk moths in Europe: Saturnia pavonia and Saturnia pavoniella (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae). To address species delimitation in these parapatric taxa, target enrichment and mtDNA sequencing was employed al...

Despite relatively extensive historical exploration being carried out on Lepidopteran fauna of South Africa, leaf-mining micromoths of the family Gracillariidae remain a source of discovery, with many new species awaiting description. In the present work, 32 gracillariid species from South Africa are treated. For each species, hostplant and distrib...

Individual sorting and identification of thousands of insects collected in mass trapping biosurveillance programmes is a labour-intensive and time-consuming process. Metabarcoding allows the simultaneous identification of multiple individuals in a single mixed sample and has the potential to expedite this process. However, detecting all the species...

The reference genome of the Spanish Moon Moth, Graellsia isabellae, will be of great importance for evolutionary and conservation genomics. Firstly, this reference genome, alongside phylogenomic analyses, may finally resolve the longstanding debate regarding the scientific name of this iconic species, whether it should be Graellsia isabellae (Grael...

this article describes the discovery in France of Mondeguina atlanticella, a species new to our country. This discovery highlights the importance of DNA barcoding in the study of French microlepidoptera.

Des difficultés pour différencier les mâles d’Isotrias hybridana de ceux d’I. rectifasciana ont été rencontrées lors de l’inventaire des lépidoptères sur plusieurs sites d’Occitanie. Afin de résoudre ce problème, une série d’individus d’Isotrias a été analysée. L’analyse a pris en compte des critères de morphologie externe, de structures génitales...

Individual sorting and identification of thousands of insects collected in mass trapping biosurveillance programs is a labour intensive and time-consuming process. Metabarcoding, allows for the simultaneous identification of multiple individuals in a single mixed sample and has the potential to expedite this process. However, detecting all the spec...

Aim Climate is a major driver of large-scale variability in biodiversity, as a likely result of more intense biotic interactions under warmer conditions. This idea fuelled decades of research on plant-herbivore interactions, but much less is known about higher-level trophic interactions. We addressed this research gap by characterizing both bird di...

Individual sorting and identification of thousands of insects collected in mass trapping biosurveillance programs is a labor intensive and time-consuming process. Metabarcoding, which allows for the simultaneous identification of multiple individuals in a single mixed sample, has the potential to expedite this process. However, detecting all the sp...

Background. Broad-scale monitoring of arthropods is often carried out with passive traps (e.g., Malaise traps) that can collect thousands of specimens per sample. The identification of individual specimens requires time and taxonomic expertise, limiting the geographical and temporal scale of research and monitoring studies. DNA metabarcoding of bul...

The focus of this study is to understand the evolutionary relationships and taxonomy of widely distributed parapatric species pair of wild silk moths, Saturnia pavonia and Saturnia pavoniella (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) in Europe. To address species delimitation challenges associated with many parapatric taxa, target enrichment and mtDNA sequencing...

Individual sorting and identification of thousands of insects collected in mass trapping biosurveillance programs is a labor intensive and time-consuming process. Metabarcoding, which allows for the simultaneous identification of multiple individuals in a single mixed sample, has the potential to expedite this process. However, detecting all the sp...

Conservation managers need to know the degree of connectivity showed by the populations to be preserved, especially when protected areas and/or species are involved. One of the conservation projects carried out by the Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park (Central Pyrenees, Spain) is the monitoring of the protected Spanish Moon Moth, Graellsia isabe...

Background Broad-scale monitoring of arthropods is often carried out with passive traps ( e.g . Malaise traps) that can collect thousands of specimens per sample. The identification of individual specimens requires time and taxonomic expertise, limiting the geographical and temporal scale of research and monitoring studies. DNA metabarcoding of bul...

Aim Climate is a major driver of large scale variability in biodiversity, as a likely result of more intense biotic interactions under warmer conditions. This idea fuelled decades of research on plant-herbivore interactions, but much less is known about higher-level trophic interactions. We addressed this research gap by characterizing both bird di...

Wild bees are declining, mainly due to the expansion of urban habitats that have led to land-use changes. Effects of urbanization on wild bee communities are still unclear, as shown by contrasting reports on their species and functional diversities in urban habitats. To address this current controversy, we built a large dataset, merging 16 surveys...

Context Many forest ecosystems around the world are facing increasing drought-induced dieback, causing mortality patches across the landscape at multiple scales. This increases the supply of biological legacies and differentially affects forest insect communities. Objectives We analysed the relative effects of local- and landscape-level dieback on...

The subgenus Brevantennia Sieder, 1953 of the genus Dahlica Enderlein, 1912 (Psychidae: Dahlicini) is represented by a group of 10 bagworm moth species, distributed in south-west and south-east Europe northwards to the Alps and Carpathians. This study is a revision of the subgenus Brevantennia species occurring in Slovenia based on our own comprehe...

A bstract Wild silkmoths (Saturniidae) are one of the most emblematic and most studied families of moths. Yet, the absence of a robust phylogenetic framework based on a comprehensive taxonomic sampling impedes our understanding of their evolutionary history. We analyzed 1,024 ultraconserved elements (UCEs) and their flanking regions to infer the re...

The lime leaf-miner, Phyllonorycter issikii is an invasive micromoth with an unusually higher number of haplotypes in the invaded area (Europe, Western Siberia) compared to its putative native region (East Asia). The origin of the genetic diversity in the neocolonized region remains unclear. We surveyed over 15 thousand herbarium specimens of lime...

• Global insect decline has recently become a cause for major concern, particularly in the tropics where the vast majority of species occurs. Deforestation is suggested as being a major driver of this decline, but how anthropogenic changes in landscape structure affect tropical insect communities has rarely been addressed. • We sampled Saturniidae...

Increasing urbanisation is one of the primary drivers of land-use change that threaten biodiversity. Wild bee communities have been reported with contrasting responses to urbanisation, with varying effects on abundance and taxonomical diversity. The suite of functional traits exhibited by wild bee species might determine their persistence in urban...

Trois nouvelles espèces de membracides, proches de Lycoderides brulei Sakakibara, 2013, sont décrites de Guyane Francaise : Lycoderides carboneus Lap ze n. sp., Lycoderides elephantus Lap ze n. sp. et Lycoderides sonzognii Lap ze n. sp.. Les deux premi res sont décrites sur des spécimens adultes des deux sexes, leur dernier stade larvaire est d cri...

Species richness, abundance and biomass of insects have recently undergone marked declines in Europe. We metabarcoded 211 Malaise-trap samples to investigate whether drought-induced forest dieback and subsequent salvage logging had an impact on ca. 3000 species of flying insects in silver fir Pyrenean forests. While forest dieback had no measurable...

Context: Forest ecosystems worldwide are facing increasing drought-induced dieback, causing mortality patches across the landscape at multiple scales. This increases the supply of biological legacies and differentially affects forest insect communities. Objectives: We analysed the relative effects of local- and landscape-level dieback on local sapr...

Gracillariidae is the most taxonomically diverse cosmopolitan leaf-mining moth family, consisting of nearly 2000 named species in 105 described genera, classified into eight extant subfamilies. The majority of gracillariid species are internal plant feeders as larvae, creating mines and galls in plant tissue. Despite their diversity and ecological...

Historical herbaria are valuable sources of data in invasion biology. Here we study the invasion history of the lime leaf-miner, Phyllonorycter issikii , by surveying over 15 thousand herbarium specimens of limes ( Tilia spp.) collected in the Palearctic during last 253 years (1764–2016). The majority of herbarium specimens with the pest’s mines (8...

Global change challenges the adaptive potential of forests. Large-scale alterations of forest canopies have been reported across Europe, and further modifications are expected in response to the predicted changes in drought and windstorm regimes. Since forest canopies are dynamic interfaces between atmosphere and land surface, communities of canopy...

DNA barcoding has been succesfully used for bio-surveillance of forest and agricultural pests in temperate areas, but has few applications in the tropics and particulary in Africa. Cacosceles newmannii (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is a Prioninae species that is locally causing extensive damage in commercially-grown sugarcane in the KwaZulu-Natal Prov...

Marked decline in insect species richness, abundance and biomass have recently been quantified in Europe. We metabarcoded 224 Malaise-trap samples to investigate whether drought-induced forest dieback and subsequent salvage logging have an impact on flying insects ( ca . 3000 insect species) in silver fir Pyrenean forests. We found no evidence that...

China has recently announced a reform of forestry policy, with a major goal being to transform from plantation to heterogeneous forests, which have higher resistance to pests and disease and house more biodiversity. One driver of reform is increased intensity and frequency of pest-induced tree-dieback events. To inform management, we ask what effec...

The current decline of wild bees puts important ecosystem services such as pollination at risk. Both inventory and monitoring programs are needed to understand the causes of wild bee decline. Effective insect monitoring relies on both mass-trapping methods coupled with rapid and accurate identifications. Identifying wild bees using only morphology...

Gracillariidae is the most species-rich leaf-mining moth family with over 2,000 described species worldwide. In Europe, there are 263 valid named species recognized, many of which are difficult to identify using morphology only. Here we explore the use of DNA barcodes as a tool for identification and species discovery in European gracillariids. We...

Supplementary Table S1 | Checklist of the 263 European Gracillariidae species following the higher classification of Kawahara et al. (2017), and species not included in the checklist. Supplementary Table S2 | Metadata of 6,791 COI sequences and 312 BINs used in this study. Supplementary Table S3 | Summary statistics for specimens included in this...

Natural disturbances are major drivers of forest dynamics. However, in the current context of anthropogenic global warming, shifts in disturbance regimes are expected. Natural disturbances usually leave biological or structural legacies which are important for early-successional species. Nevertheless, these legacies are usually eliminated by forest...

Increasing urbanisation is one of the primary drivers of land-use change that threaten biodiversity. Wild bee communities have been reported to show contrasting responses to urbanisation, with varying effects on both abundance and taxonomical diversity. The suite of functional traits exhibited by wild bee species might determine their occurrence in...

Leaf miners are a highly diverse group of insects those larvae feed inside leaves making cavities, i.e. leaf mines. Many leaf miners are highly invasive and can cause serious damage to plants. Indeed, some species can lead to losses of different crops in agriculture, others are known as forest and ornamental pests. Their diversity and trophic assoc...

Developing methods to rear phytophagous insects is crucial to reveal the true complexity of interactions between insects and their host plants. Here we focus on leaf-mining insects, an ecological guild across four different orders (Lepidoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, and Hymenoptera) whose larvae feed inside the leaves of their host plants, producing...

Saproxylic beetles are important bioindicators of forest health but their enormous diversity makes their identification challenging. As an example, the French fauna of saproxylic beetles alone contains 2,663 species in 72 families. Recently, DNA barcoding was proposed as a promising tool for the identification and monitoring of saproxylic beetle sp...

Metabarcoding increases the taxonomic resolution and geographic scale at which researchers can assess the impacts of climate change on insect communities in forests

The Gracillariidae fauna of Siberia, the region that occupies almost half of the territory of the Russian Federation, remains poorly studied. During a DNA barcoding study of Gracillariidae in Siberia, based on analysis of larvae and pupae collected from their leaf mines on woody plants, we identifi ed 41 species. Three gracillariids were identifi e...

The Russian Far East (RFE) is an important hotspot of biodiversity whose insect fauna remains understudied, particularly its Microlepidoptera. Here we explore the diversity of leaf-mining micromoths of the family Gracillariidae, their distribution and host plant associations in RFE using a combination of field observations and sampling, DNA barcodi...

On the platform of the international genetic database BOLD (Barcode of Life database), 12 thematic molecular genetic libraries of the leaf-mining micromoths Gracillariidae from Asian Russia and the adjacent territories have been created, allowing quick and accurate identification of gracillariid species by any developmental stages.

In insects, the gall-inducing lifestyle has evolved independently many times. several evolutionary pathways leading to this lifestyle have been proposed. While there is compelling evidence supporting surface-feeders and stem-borers as ancestral states of insect gall-inducers, an evolutionary pathway from leaf-miners remains hypothetical. Here we ex...

During a DNA barcoding campaign of leaf-mining Gracillariidae from the Asian part of Russia, a new species of Phyllonorycter Hübner, feeding on the Siberian pea shrub, Caragana arborescens Lam. (Fabaceae) was discovered in Siberia. Here, this taxon is described as Phyllonorycter ivani sp. n. Among Fabaceae-feeding Phyllonorycter, so far only P. car...

Madagascar is a prime evolutionary hotspot globally, but its unique biodiversity is under threat, essentially from anthropogenic disturbance. There is a race against time to describe and protect the Madagascan endangered biota. Here we present a first molecular characterization of the micromoth fauna of Madagascar. We collected 1572 micromoths main...

Biodiversity research in tropical ecosystems - popularized as the most biodiverse habitats on Earth - often neglects invertebrates, yet representing the bulk of local species richness. Insect communities in particular remain strongly impeded by both Linnaean and Wallacean shortfalls, and identifying species often remains a formidable challenge inhi...

Leaves represent the main resource for herbivorous insects and their performances are mainly a function of leaf nutritional quality. Two feeding strategies are known to optimize the exploitation of leaf resources: leaf-miners that selectively feed on tissues of high nutritional quality and gall-inducers that induce the development of a new tissue s...

Location of the study site. Orange circles show trees used in phenology census and purple circles show trees used for detached leaf and larval translocation experiments. (TIF)

Geometrical estimate of leaf and leaf-mine area. (TIF)

Replicates of the leaf-mines cross-sections of the detached leaf experiment (Exp. 1) and the larva ablation experiment (Exp. 3). Cross-sections of leaf-mines at fourteen days after beginning of fourth instar (Ctrl.), at fourteen days after beginning of fourth instar on a detached leaf (D.), and at fourteen days after killing the larvae at late thir...

The meteological data of the study site in 2015 to 2017. All data derived from the observation point of Japan Meteorological Agency in Higashiomi town, which is the nearest observation point to the study site. (XLSX)

Plan of detached leaves and larval translocation experiments (Exp. 1 and Exp. 2). (TIF)

Global changes are causing rapid alterations in the composition and structure of butterfly communities. Here we release distribution data on 1456 individuals of 124 species of butterflies collected in 101 localities (52 UTM), by López-Vaamonde between 1982 and 1998 in Galicia (Northwest of Iberian Peninsula) and deposited in his private collection....

Проведена оценка видового состава комплекса листовых минирующих насекомых, повреждающих ивы (Salix spp.) и тополя (Populus spp.) в Сибири. С учетом литературных данных комплекс насчитывает 50 видов минирующих насекомых из отрядов Lepidoptera (24 вида), Coleoptera (15), Diptera (6) и Hymenoptera (5). С помощью морфологических и молекулярно-генетичес...

This paper provides an overview of the leaf-mining insect community feeding on willows (Salix spp.) and poplars (Populus spp.) in Siberia. According to published data and our own observations, 50 leaf-mining insect species (i.e., 24 species of Lepidoptera, 15 Coleoptera, 6 Diptera, and 5 Hymenoptera) feed on those two plant genera in Siberia. Using...

• Graellsia isabellae is a protected lepidopteran both in France and Spain; however, there has been considerable debate over its conservation status. Recent literature emphasised the need of monitoring population size in the different mountain ranges where this iconic species occurs. • We used mark–capture–recapture and genotypes of nine molecular...

Une campagne d’étude réalisée de 2013 à 2017 sur Actias isabellae galliaegloria Ch. Obth. a permis d’acquérir de nouvelles connaissances sur la biologie, l’éthologie et la répartition de cette sous-espèce du Papillon Isabelle dans les Alpes françaises méridionales. La poursuite de ces recherches en 2018 devrait conduire à affiner les résultats obte...

The Baculoviridae, a family of insect-specific large DNA viruses, is widely used in both biotechnology and biological control. Its applied value stems from millions of years of evolution influenced by interactions with their hosts and the environment. To understand how ecological interactions have shaped baculovirus diversification, we reconstructe...

This paper provides new taxonomic and biological data on a complex of gracillariid moths in the endemic genus Philodoria Walsingham, 1907 that are associated with Myrsine (Primulaceae) in the Hawaiian Islands, United States. Two new species, Philodoria kauaulaensis Kobayashi, Johns & Kawahara, sp. n. (host: Myrsine lanaiensis, M. lessertiana, and M...

The Baculoviridae, a family of insect-specific large DNA viruses, is widely used in both biotechnology and biological control. Its applied value stems from millions of years of evolution influenced by interactions with their hosts and the environment. To understand how ecological interactions, have shaped baculovirus diversification, we reconstruct...

Plants constitute key nutritional resources for many organisms on Earth and protect these resources by enhancing interactions with mutualists while reducing interactions with antagonists. Interactions with different members of their ecological community can lead to a profound reconfiguration of the plant’s physiology, which favors beneficial organi...