Asphondylia echii
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Diptera
- Family: Cecidomyiidae
- Genus: Asphondylia
- Species: Asphondylia echii
Visual Description
Asphondylia echii is a gall-forming midge. Based on observations from the TreeOfLife-200M dataset, the adult insects exhibit the characteristic delicate, slender body form typical of the family Cecidomyiidae, with long, thin legs and antennae.[1]
Ecology and Biology
Asphondylia echii (Loew, 1850), commonly known as the viper's bugloss gall midge, is a gall-forming dipteran within the family Cecidomyiidae.[2]
- Host Plant and Gall Formation: This species is a narrow oligophagous insect. Its larvae develop individually within unopened, slightly swollen flowers or thin-walled, oval galls that form in place of flowers on Echium vulgare L. (Boraginaceae).,[3]
- Development: The larval chamber is lined with mycelium. Pupation occurs within the gall. The species completes two generations per year.
- Detection: Damage within inflorescences is typically not externally visible.
Distribution
Asphondylia echii is a West Palearctic species. It has been recorded in various European countries, including Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, as well as in Israel. In Russia, it has been documented in the Leningrad Region, the Middle Volga region, the Krasnodar Territory, and more recently, in the Republic of Dagestan.
Gallery
References
- 1 2 Dataset view for Animalia / Arthropoda / Insecta / Diptera / Cecidomyiidae / Asphondylia / echii constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- ↑ Z. A. Fedotova; Г. М. Нахибашева; Г. М. Мухтарова; K. S. Bekshokov; А. Г. Гасангаджиева. New and little‐known species of gall midges (Diptera, Cecidomyiidae) and other gall‐formers in the fauna of Dagestan. South of Russia ecology development. 2025. https://doi.org/10.18470/1992-1098-2024-4-8.
- ↑ Asphondylia echii. Global Biotic Interactions. https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/?targetTaxon=Asphondylia%20echii. Accessed 2026-07-14.