Plant-feeding gall midges are reported from Estonia for the first time. A week-long field trip in August 2025 resulted in records of 45 species as new to the country. Adding reliable records of additional species from citizen science portals resulted in a first preliminary checklist of 70 species, two of which were identified to the genus level only. This is but a first stab at investigating the hitherto unknown gall midge fauna of Estonia.
eElurikkus. Estonian biodiversity data portal.
https://elurikkus.ee/ (accessed 2025-09-01).
Fedotova, Z. A. 2025. Gall midges (Diptera, Cecidomyiidae) of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Province: fauna, trophic relationships, features of biology and economic importance. Entomological Review, 105, 337–412.
https://doi.org/10.1134/S001387382505001X
Gagné, R. J. and Jaschhof, M. 2025. A Catalog of the Cecidomyiidae (Diptera) of the World. 6th ed. Zenodo.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15409750
GBIF. Occurrence of Cecidomyiidae in Estonia. GBIF occurrence download.
https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.rj7bt4 (accessed 2025-08-30).
Harris, K. 2010. Notes on gall midge galls recorded on Filipendula ulmaria and F. vulgaris in the United Kingdom. Cecidology, 25, 6–10, 20–21.
Hartop, E., Srivathsan, A., Ronquist, F. and Meier, R. 2022. Towards large-scale integrative taxonomy (LIT): resolving the data conundrum for dark taxa. Systematic Biology, 71, 1404–1422.
https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syac033
Hebert, P. D. N., Ratnasingham, S., Zakharov, E. V., Telfer, A. C., Levesque-Beaudin, V., Milton, M. A. et al. 2016. Counting animal species with DNA barcodes: Canadian insects. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 371(1702), 20150333.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0333
iNaturalist.
https://www.inaturalist.org (accessed 2025-09-01).
Jaschhof, M., Skuhravá, M. and Penttinen, J. 2014. Checklist of the Cecidomyiidae (Diptera) of Finland. ZooKeys, 441, 103–118.
https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.441.7503
Meier, R., Lawniczak, M. K. N. and Srivathsan, A. 2025. Illuminating entomological dark matter with DNA barcodes in an era of insect decline, deep learning, and genomics. Annual Review of Entomology, 70, 185–204.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-040124-014001
Roskam, J. C. 2019. Plant Galls of Europe: Keys to Plant Galls (Zoo- and Phytocecidia) of Central and Northern Europe. KNNV Publishing, Zeist, The Netherlands.
Sikora, T., Jaschhof, M. and Kurina, O. 2020. Additions to the Estonian fauna of mycophagous Cecidomyiidae (Diptera), with a description of Unicornella estonensis gen. et sp. nov. Zootaxa, 4851(2), 349–363.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4851.2.8
Skuhravá, M. and Skuhravý, V. 2010. Species richness of gall midges (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) in Europe (West Palaearctic): biogeography and coevolution with host plants. Acta Societatis Zoologicae Bohemicae, 73, 87–156.
Skuhravá, M. and Skuhravý, V. 2021. The Gall Midges of Europe. KNNV Publishing, Zeist, The Netherlands.
Spungis, V. 1998. New species of gall midges (Diptera, Cecidomyiidae, Porricondylinae) from Estonia. Latvijas Entomologs, 36, 21–26.
Spungis, V. 2003. A checklist of Latvian Cecidomyiinae (Diptera, Cecidomyiidae) with notes on new records. Latvijas Entomologs, 40, 5–11.
Spungis, V. and Jaschhof, M. 2000. Gall midges of subfamily Lestremiinae from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: checklist and description of new species (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae). Beiträge zur Entomologie, 50(2), 283–316.
https://doi.org/10.21248/contrib.entomol.50.2.283-316
Srivathsan, A., Ang, Y., Heraty, J. M., Hwang, W. S., Jusoh, W. F. A., Kutty, S. N. et al. 2023. Convergence of dominance and neglect in flying insect diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 7, 1012–1021.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02066-0
