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Terobiella nigriceps
On a young eucalyptus (E.microcarpa?) some whole branches seemed covered in these galls like small fingers. Average length about 30mm.
Suburban eucalyptus roadside.
According to Dr Ken Walker at Victoria Museum, they are caused by a genus of mites... Eriophyes
Taxonomy: Animalia: Arthropoda: Arachnida: Trombidiformes: Eriophyidae: Eriophyes
UPDATE Oct. 1 2013 Some of these have been dissected by martinl and have revealed a single larva that looks like dipteran or hymenopteran
ie. maggot
Although Ken has said mites I am still going for midges as most likely..
UPDATE Mar. 17 2015 Now it's a type of Chalcid wasp - Terobiella nigriceps
9 Comments
Thanks for the info. Similar galls have recently been found at Barnawartha in NE Victoria, concentrated on self-sown Eucs (E. albens?).
refer http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/140...
Interesting info BioEu - I presume the Glycaspis is originally from Aus also but will look it up. @shekainah I don't think they would be very good to eat because in theory they are made of wood or bark so you would need to cook it for about 6 days :)
Weird but looks yummy.
I can imagine why you would think that BioEu. When eucalypts were taken overseas, like with most exporting of life, they never took the dependent or enemy species so things go crazy without their enemies. In Aus eucalypts are home and food to an incredible variety of lifeforms that have evolved together.
Thanks for the comments all. I'm sorry to say I've been remiss on the science martin. Will attempt to rectify this tomorrow if it's not raining. But you can count me out for the counting as I already did it - there were heaps. Hollow? to follow.
Cool! I've a similar spotting Argy I think. I like yours better :) http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/123...
Impressive. Are they hollow? The scientific thing to do would be to count them.
The eucalyptus in Australia have more varieties of galls.
Awesome spot. am sure Martin will love this one!!