Bruggmanniella orientalis
Creators: name: Kolesik, Peter
name: Gagné, Raymond J.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Diptera
Cecidomyiidae
Bruggmanniella
Bruggmanniella orientalis

description: Bruggmanniella orientalis (Felt). New combination.
[Figs 10 a–e]
Diceromyia orientalis Felt, 1927b: 388.
Apoasphondylia orientalis (Felt): Gagné 1973: 493, new combination.
Material examined: Holotype male reared by DvL, 3-ii-1924 from Phoebe declinata Nees. (Lauraceae) collected in virgin forest, near Sibolangit (Medan area), Sumatra, Indonesia, Felt #a3387). The specimen was “badly broken” when Felt (1927b) received it. The Canada balsam slide preparation contains the uncleared body with flagellomeres missing, wings collapsed and only two entire legs present, one fore- and one hindleg. The terminalia are viewable caudally, only the gonostyli are visible.
Description. Male. Length 2 mm. Palpus 1-segmented, twice as long as wide, with long setae [Fig. 10d]. First tarsal segment with strong, slightly curved, pointed, ventroapical spur [Fig. 10c]. Tarsal claws rather narrow, bent at distal third, empodia reaching bend in claws [Fig. 10b], pulvilli tiny. Gonostylus as long as wide at midlength, with two separate, pointed, distal teeth, 3x as long as basal width, one of them slightly shorter than the other [Fig. 10e].
Female, pupa, and larva unknown.
Remarks. This species, previously assigned to Apoasphondylia Gagné, a replacement name for the preoccupied Diceromyia Felt, shows no close affinity to the type species A. vernoniae (Felt) that causes an undescribed gall on Vernonia lancifolia Merr. (Asteraceae) in the Philippines (Felt 1918). That species has a single, bifurcate gonostylar tooth with two greatly uneven points, one of them twice the length of the other (Gagné 1969, Fig. 4). Known only from the male, B. orientalis could fit in either Bruggmanniella or Pseudasphondylia, genera defined on the basis of larval and pupal characters (Gagné 1994; Elsayed, pers. comm.). We elect to place A. orientalis in Bruggmanniella, the older name of the two possibilities.
Biology. This species induces a complex stem gall on Phoebe declinata (Fig. 10a), described and illustrated by DvLR & DvL (1926, gall No. 468, Fig. 331). The gall consists of a large, irregular, amorphous swelling made of hypertrophic bark tissue from which several thin, cylindrical, pointed tubes protrude. The basal swelling is greybrown, about 30 mm long and 10–15 mm wide, and does not alter the woody tissue inside the bark. The protruding tubes, green with red bases, narrow, pointed, hard-walled and 10–20 mm long in total, are embedded within the swelling. Each tube contains a larval chamber that stretches along the length of the tube and is occupied by a single larva.
Geographical distribution. This species is currently known only from the type locality near Sibolangit, Medan area, on the east coast of Sumatra where it was collected from Phoebe declinata 3-ii-1924.
description: Published as part of Kolesik, Peter & Gagné, Raymond J., 2020, A review of the gall midges (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) of Indonesia: taxonomy, biology and adult key to genera, pp. 1-82 in Zootaxa 4847 (1) on pages 24-25, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4847.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/4406856