Speckled gall wasp
The speckled gall wasp is a wasp that makes a safe home for its babies on oak leaves. The mother lays an egg on the underside of a leaf, and the leaf grows a little ball around it, called a gall. The baby wasp grows up inside.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Inside the gall, the baby sits in a tiny room right in the middle, held in place by thin threads like the spokes of a bicycle wheel.
One oak leaf can carry one to three of these galls.
The next generation of these wasps makes its galls on oak buds instead of leaves.
Sometimes earwigs or moth caterpillars eat a gall before the baby wasp is ready to come out.
Most asked questions about Speckled gall wasp
?What is a gall?
A gall is a lump that a plant grows when an insect lays an egg in it. It works as a home and a food store for the baby insect.
?Where does the speckled gall wasp live?
On oak trees along the Pacific coast of North America, from British Columbia to northern California.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Besbicus mirabilis
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Cynipidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Cynipidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Besbicus mirabilis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by (c) Karla Salp, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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