The Gall Midges of Europe

Description:

This book, written by two well-known, highly respected Czech entomologists, provides a summary of knowledge on gall midges (Cecidomyiidae). This book covers their biology, occurrence and distribution in Europe, and their importance in agriculture and forestry.

Gall midges are small flies, usually only two millimeters long. They live in various environments and biotopes. In Europe, about 1800 species are known. While the life span of adults is very short (usually only few hours), larvae may live several months, and the soil-inhabiting larvae even several years.

The larvae are either phytophagous (plant-feeding), mycophagous and saprophagous (associated with fungi), zoophagous (predators of other flies and small arthropods) or xylophilous (living in wood and woody material).

In this book, the gall midge species for each host plant are described and are arranged alphabetically according to their genus and species name. Zoophagous, mycophagous and free-living species of gall midges are always placed at the end of their respective section for specific host plant.

An important part of this publication is a collection of colour and black and white photos of galls on plants, and many scanning electron-microphotographs, showing the distinguishing morphological features of larvae, pupae and adult gall midges.