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Torymus
I collected these galls that fell from my oak trees and kept them in a jar, thinking they had already all hatched, and later this wasp and another smaller one showed up. I let them fly away. The last picture is just the galls. The wasp was maybe 5mm long, or 1/4".
Spotted on Aug 16, 2014
Submitted on Aug 16, 2014
4 Comments
Wow, so interesting! Thanks John.
Yes, her larva would have been inside one of the chambers in the galls feeding on the gall wasp larva. There are LOTS of kinds of wasps that can come out if you stick some galls in jar - and they can emerge over fairly long periods of time. Sometimes with a largish gall wasp, you can get several smaller parasites developing on a single host larva.
Oh wow, thanks John! So would this lady have hatched out of one of the galls too? I read that they can parasitize the larvae. The galls were in a sealed jar until this one and the other tinier insect appeared. Maybe the tiny thing was the actual gall wasp, but it flew away before I could get a picture. It was the size of a fruit fly.
Hi Grace
This is a chalcid wasp (Chalcidoidea) in the family Torymidae.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torymidae
I strongly suspect that it is in the genus Torymus - which are pretty common parasites in galls.
These wasps are parasitoids of the gall wasps (Cynipidae) which form these galls on oak trees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall_wasp