TortAI Key

About TortAI Key

The purpose of the Tortricids of Agricultural Importance (TortAI) Key is to aid in the identification of tortricid adults encountered during domestic surveys and tortricid larvae encountered during quarantine inspections at U.S. ports of entry. Because the world tortricid fauna is too large to treat as a whole, this key is not designed to identify every tortricid encountered, but rather to reliably eliminate or confirm target taxa if or when they are encountered. It may not be possible to identify many tortricid larvae using only morphological characters. A molecular sequence search tool is provided in the original tool (http://idtools.org/id/leps/tortai/) to allow identifiers with sequencing capabilities the ability to confirm DNA barcode sequences for the larvae of most taxa treated here.

TortAI Key is designed for use by persons in the continental United States performing domestic surveys for exotic species or encountering exotic species during port inspections (taxa originating from Hawaii are treated as exotic). Although much of the information can be applied to other parts of the world, identification characters for adults and larvae (outlined below) are specific to the scope of the keys and may lead to ambiguous or misleading results when used outside of this context. TortAI is not designed as a general resource for identifying all tortricid species.

Key authors: Todd M. Gilligan and Marc E. Epstein

Lucid Mobile key developed by USDA APHIS ITP