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.

GBIF url: https://www.gbif.org/dataset/2e44a422-303c-4b66-a42a-632d22aa38bb
Citation: Wang Y, Kuo L (2025). Fern spore feeding records of Cuprininae moth (Stathmopodidae) in Tengping, Taiwan. Institute of Molecular & Cellular Biology, National Tsing Hua University. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/xygtn6 accessed via GBIF.org on 2025-06-18.