Cecidomyiidae

Cecidomyiidae View in CoL View at ENA

Cecidomyiidae View in CoL is one of the most speciose families of Diptera , with more than 6,600 species described in 832 genera ( Gagné and Jaschhof 2021). Part of the cecidomyiids is popularly known as “gall midges”, with gall-inducer larvae. The family also includes mycetophagous, predaceous, and free-living phytophagous larvae. The family is monophyletic, and the most recent classification system divided it into six subfamilies ( Gagné and Jaschhof 2021).The Nearctic and Palearctic faunas are known for more than two thousand species each, while the Neotropical fauna is still superficially known, comprising less than 10% of the species described worldwide. The first Neotropical cecidomyiid species were described at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. During this period, Jean Jacques Kieffer (1857–1925), Ewald Heinrich Rübsaamen (1857–1919), and Joachim da Silva Tavares (1866–1931) stood out for their pioneering and valuable studies. After them, taxonomic contributions there were scattered until 1959, when Edwin Möhn (1928–2008) began publishing on the fauna of El Salvador. A few years later, Raymond Gagné (1935–) published the first catalog of the Neotropical Cecidomyiidae View in CoL . Gagné (1994) published the “green book” which is still an essential reference for the taxonomic study of the Neotropical Cecidomyiidae View in CoL . In the 1990s, Brazilian taxonomists began to actively describe species and deal with the diversity of the family in the country. According to Maia (2021), the family is presently represented by 293 species of 105 genera in Brazil ( Carmo-Neto et al. 2021, Maia 2022a, 2022b, 2022 c, Garcia et al. 2023a, 2023b, 2023 c, 2023d).