Insect galls of the Brazilian Cerrado: associated fauna

Abstract

Insect galls host a rich and diverse fauna of secondary dwellers, which compose the associated fauna. In Brazil, many inventories of insect galls in Cerrado areas have recorded secondary dwellers. These records were scattered in several papers. This study gathered literature data to provide an overview of the arthropod fauna associated with insect galls in the Brazilian Cerrado. We searched for scientific publications in online academic databases and retrieved 16 papers with data on the secondary dwellers. We limited our search to the period from 1988 to 2020. We updated the name of plant species and verified endemism and geographic distribution in Flora do Brasil 2020. We provided plant species uses based on the Tropical Useful Plants 2014. We found 163 gall morphotypes with secondary dwellers (16.8% of the total of gall morphotypes of the Brazilian Cerrado) on 94 plant species in 37 families. Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Myrtaceae, and Malpighiaceae exhibited the greatest number of records. These are the richest families in insect galls in the Brazilian Cerrado. Most arthropod fauna were recorded in galls of Cecidomyiidae (Diptera). Most records were in leaf galls, the predominant galled organ. Parasitoids were more frequent than successors, inquilines, and predators. Eulophidae and Eurytomidae were the most frequent parasitoid families. Inquilines were represented by Coleoptera, Diplopoda, Diptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Psocoptera, and Thysanoptera; successors by Acari, Araneae, Cecidomyiidae (Diptera), Coleoptera, Collembola, and Formicidae (Hymenoptera), whereas predators by Pseudoscorpiones and Diptera. Most records were presented in suprageneric categories, showing that the taxonomic knowledge is very deficient. 29 plant species are endemic to Brazil and totaled 45 gall morphotypes with secondary dwellers; 46 plant species are useful and host secondary dwellers in 62 gall morphotypes. These data add ecological and economic importance to these arthropods.

Arthropod communities associated with gall-inducingAciurina bigeloviaeandAciurina trixa(Diptera: Tephritidae) in New Mexico

“…Both of these Aciurina -associated communities appear to be far richer than those documented from other studied Asteraceae-galling Tephritidae species (e.g. Valentibulla spp., Tephritis conura, Eutreta diana, Eutreta xanthochaeta, Tomoplagia rudolfi, Urophora cardui ) by at least two-fold (Wangberg 1978, Romstock-Volkl 1990, Emlen 1992, Hernández-López et al 2021, Maia and Silva 2021, Swenson et al 2022). The most closely-related tephritid fly with a species-level community description, Eurosta solidaginis , only hosts 3 associates (Walton 1988).…”