Interesting lessons we can learn using past herbarium collections for studying forest insect pest invasions

Historical herbaria collected around the world are valuable source of data for studying past communities of folivore organisms and tracking their distributions through the time. Here we examined the world biggest herbarium collection stored in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris, France) in order to explore past Tilia-feeding endophage complexes and their populations in the Holarctic and clarify the expansion history of the lime leafminer, Phyllonorycter issikii Kumata, 1963 (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae), an invasive pest in Europe damaging limes, Tilia spp. (Malvaceae).