HOST RELATIONSHIPS IN NORTH AMERICAN FUNGUS-FEEDING MOTHS (OECOPHORIDAE, OINOPHILIDAE, TINEIDAE) JOHN F. LAWRENCE AND JERRY A. POWELL^ ABSTRACT Feeding habits and habitat preferences are discnssed for 19 species of North Amer-ican Microlepidoptera known to occur in wood-rotting fungi. A brief section on host fungi and the nature of the fungus sub-strate is followed by a general discussion of host ranges. Detailed biological infor-mation is included under each species. Oinophihi v-flava and members of the Oecophoridae are considered to be gen-eral scavengers utihzing fungi occasionally, while the Tineidae include obligate fungus-feeders, occurring mainly in Polyporaceae. Among the Tineidae, some species {Moro-phaga crypfophori) appear to be host-specific, while others (Nemapogon dcjec-tdlus ) are ecologically restricted but utilize a number of host fungi. Certain fungus species, such as Pohjporm gihus and P. miinzii, are frequently inhabited by tineids, while P. versicolor and certain others serve only as incidental hosts. INTRODUCTION A fungus-feeding habit has long been recognized for certain Microlepidoptera, particularly Tineidae. Information about host relationships has been based mainly ^ Research conducted in part in connection with National Science Foundation grant project GB-4014. 2 University of California, Berkeley, California. Bull. Mas. Comp. Zool., 138(2): 29-51, April, 1969 on European species, and knowledge of the feeding habits of North American spe-cies has lagged far behind that of their Palaearctic counterparts. Forbes ( 1923), for example, gives only a few unidentified host records for fungus-feeding tineids of the northeastern United States, and no fungus associations are given for Oecophoridae. There have been few subsequent reports to fill out this gap in our knowledge. In contrast, fungus hosts are known for a number of British oecophorids (e.g., Mey-rick, 1895), and numerous rearing records are available for many of the European fungus-feechng tineids (Hinton, 1956; Petersen, 1957, 1958; Zagulajev, 1964). In the course of a rearing program for insects, particularly Coleoptcra, associated with Polyporaceae and other wood-rotting fungi, during 1960-1963, a number of tineids were reared from various poh'pores collected in Oregon, California, and Ari-zona. Although subsequent collections were made especially to obtain information on the moths, many of the records given below are by-products of a survey for Ciidae and other fungus-inhabiting Coleoptera. Con-sequently, owing to the rearing methods, moths were obtained primarily when nearly mature larxae were incidentally taken with the fungus sample. As a result, many of the collections produced only one or a few individuals, creating problems in the identi-fication of the moths. 29
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