Currently, biological diversity is rapidly declining because of climate change and anthropogenic activities. However, our knowledge base of extant biodiversity is quite scanty, especially when it comes to smaller insects. Hence, its biodiversity should be investigated urgently.
The subject of research is phylogenetically young species of the genus Elachista Treitschke. The moths are small-sized, it's larvae mine assimilatory tissues of plants, and sometimes they may be pests or potential pests. Although has been studied for a long time, it remains one of the least studied groups of microlepidoptera. Most of the species form large complexes with very slight morphological differences between species. Also, unlike many similar moths, they are poorly attracted to light and therefore are very poorly represented in museum and private collections. Due to the endobiotic lifestyle in narrow-leaved herbs, the preimaginal stages also are hardly detectable. These circumstances mean that the true diversity of this poorly studied genus can be known only superficially, even in relatively well-studied regions. Therefore, there is a high probability that the methods of integrated taxonomy will reveal their true diversity with the number of new species for science. The main goal of this work is to study the diversity of phylogenetically young species of the genus Elachista and their phylogenetic relationships on the basis of morphological and molecular data.