Hey there! I work for a state park and we’re working on an educational display about the creosote gall midge. We’re having the hardest time finding a photo of an adult insect on the plant. (plenty of photos of the galls themselves on iNaturalist, though!)
Does anybody have a photo of one they’d be willing to share? You would receive credit and it would be on display in our visitor center. :)
(Only need adult midge photos- the other life stages are covered)
Given the difficulty of finding and identifying midges, I’m guessing the adults are usually only seen in a lab environment when they’re reared from the galls. Even if a midge landed on a bush while an observer was watching, they most likely wouldn’t notice and it would be difficult to tell whether it’s the same species.
Even a paper covering the species doesn’t include any images of the entire midge: https://ia801306.us.archive.org/11/items/biostor-75027/biostor-75027.pdf
I suggest using a photo of an adult congener and just labelling it as being a closely related species;
e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/117549721
Here’s an image on BugGuide of another species on Creosote: Creosote bush gall midge - Asphondylia florea
The search query would be this:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=343241&term_id=22&term_value_id=24
That finds 7 observations though all of which were wrongly annotated… so no luck on iNat sorry…
That’s a great idea! Thank you.
Out of curiosity I expanded this search to genus.
Turns out these photos are also on iNat: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/166017490
See also https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6298187 (ovipositing on Creosote?), https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/105003302, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9653686