Animal Cytogenetics / Insecta / Diptera I: Cecidomyiidae

The Cecidomyiidae are a family of ?lower? Diptera (suborder Nematocera) ranked into the superfamily Bibionomorpha. Included in the same group are the Mycetophylidae, Sciaridae, Bibionidae, Ceroplatidae, Scatopsidae, Anisopodidae and Macroceridae, to mention only families with the largest number of species. Rodendorf (1946) considers that the Cecidomyiidae originated from a family of Dipterous flies in the early Cretaceous period. Mani (1950) is of the opinion that this probably took place in the Lower Jurassic, while Henning (1954) places it in Middle-Jurassic. Möhn (1960a) too holds that free living gall midges existed already in the Jura, but that gall-producing species first appeared in the Upper Cretaceous period. Thus, apart from some differences of detail, both authors agree that primitive gall midges appeared in the Jura, that the subfamily Cecidomyiinae appeared at the beginning of the Cretaceous period as the most progressive group, and that at the end of that period this subfamily already included a group of species developing in living plant tissues and producing galls. This opinion has been confirmed by results of paleontological studies of insects from the Baltic amber, which showed that the Cecidomyiidae were a diversified and highly specialized family in the forests of the Upper Eocene, and that this family had considerable similarities to the present-day gall midges.