From galls to cecidological herbaria: the role of gall collections in modern life sciences.

Galls (also known as cecidia) have been studied by botanists, zoologists and microbiologists over the last century. Indeed, galls can be induced by different animals, bacteria, viruses and fungi, so that their presence simultaneously attested the presence of specific host plants and gall inducing species. As a consequence, gall collections, also known as cecidological herbaria or cecidological collections, can be interesting to study biodiversity changes over time. This review describes the main cecidological collections currently available in different European museums in order to stimulate their future study. The present analysis suggests that well-organized and preserved cecidological collections have great potential to guide research in taxonomy and systematics. At the same time, this review aims to encourage future research on the conservation and digitisation standards of gall specimens in order to make cecidological data more accessible to researchers.