Stigmella basiguttella

A leaf-miner on Oak, and the only oak Stigmella for which the mine can be identified without considerable difficulty.  Its history in the county is unclear but it has undoubtedly expanded massively in the last 20 years.  The first records were in the Porlock area from 1998, and it was first noticed around Taunton in 2001.  The east Mendip woodlands were widely surveyed at this time, resulting in many records of the 'difficult' oak Stigmellas but not of the 'easy' S. basiguttella - it is hard to believe that this species was missed and it seems unlikely to have been present in the area at the time.  It was first recorded here in 2017 and has regularly been found since.  The moth also reached the University of Bath campus in 2017, and by 2019 it was common there.  In 2019 it was recorded at Leigh Woods.  It is still unrecorded from large areas of the county, some of which contain plenty of oaks, but this may simply because these areas have never been searched or have not been searched for many years.