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Project Noah Nature School
Family: Cecidomyiidae
The main picture shows a gall looking like a globose terminal "bud" with soft pink tipped bract-like growths. This gall was probably formed by a dipteran, a midge. A dissected gall showed a tightly packed head of bracts or perhaps leaves with a central unilocular chamber ( pic 2) housing a creamish maggot about 3 mm long (Pics 3,4 &5). The inside of the gall showed a soft fuzzy white material almost like fungal hyphae.
These galls were seen on the tall shrub which also had several dried flower heads (Pic 6). The flowers which would have formed crowded white corymbose headlets would have been fresh between November and February and they would have looked nothing like the galls seen above.
Several of these fresh galls were spotted on a Cassinia plant, probably C. aculeata (Dogwood) in a nature reserve. Smilar galls were seen on similar plants in a another local reserve about the same time last year.
I have not been able to find information on midge galls on Cassinia but there is information about similar looking galls formed by midges of the family Cecidomyiidae in other plants of the Asteraceae family like, Fleabane and Helichrysum species. I need to do further research on this and will post information when this is confirmed.
Spotted on Sep 5, 2014
Submitted on Sep 6, 2014
1 Comment
Fasntastic work. Proof at last. :-)