Clinodiplosis Kieffer, 1894

Fjellberg, Arne & Fedotova, Zoya, 2024, New records of gall midges (Diptera, Cecidomyiidae) from Norway, Norwegian Journal of Entomology 71, pp. 8-94 : 46

Genus Clinodiplosis Kieffer, 1894

This large, cosmopolitan genus comprising 109 species contains both gall makers, mycophages, saprivores and some predators. Many Clinodiplosis species have been described from Europe, but Skuhravá (1973) synonymized most of these under the name Clinodiplosis cilicrus (Kieffer, 1889) . Currently, only 13 species are recognized from Europe ( Gagné & Jaschhof 2021), and many of these have dubious status. Clinodiplosis cilicrus in the current understanding is a widely distributed generalist which feeds on many sorts of decaying organic matter. It can be found in many different situations, such as wilting flowers, rotting nut shells and the vacated galls of other insects. According to Skuhravá & Skuhravý (2012), the species may also infect living plant tissue, causing it to die and to start decaying. We have collected Clinodiplosis from a range of different flowers (mostly of Asteraceae ) and from various galls of other midges. Most of this material awaits examination, but DNA barcoding of ten specimens collected from the flowers of seven different plant species resulted in four distinct barcode clusters, indicating that there may yet be a complex of species hiding under the name cilicrus .