Moths Traveled Far for Taste of Italian Grapevines Erik J. van Nieukerken A. oinophylla arrived from North America. A few years ago, Italian winemakers noticed a new moth that was infesting the leaves of grapevines (it showed partiality to chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and muscat grapes). A new study reports that the insect, black with shiny spots on its wings, actually originated in North America and somehow made its way across the Atlantic in the past decade. Writing in the journal ZooKeys, Erik J. van Nieukerken, an entomologist at the Netherlands Center for Biodiversity Naturalis, reports that the moth had not been studied in many decades and that it was long misclassified as another type of moth. He and his colleagues found that the moths were identical to a species of black moth with shiny metallic spots found in eastern North America. They named it Antispila oinophylla. The resemblance to "oenophilia" is not accidental. "It is found at least from Georgia up to Ontario," he said. It isn't clear how the tiny moth (a wingspan of just two-tenths of an inch) managed to travel to Europe from America, but Dr. van Nieukerken said it might not have been too difficult. "The pupae could be anyplace - it could have been on a crate," he said. And these moths can even fly into an airplane and survive. The moths do comparatively little damage in North America. In a globalized society, the movement of small pests from one region to another is becoming all too common, he said, making it important to study the taxonomy of as many insects as possible - not just those that are currently considered a nuisance. "These things simply happen today," he said. Just yesterday someone called me about a species that was probably introduced from Europe into South Africa.