Smooth spangle gall wasp
The smooth spangle gall wasp is a tiny wasp that makes little homes on oak leaves. Its larva makes the leaf grow a small bump called a gall, and lives safely inside it. It makes two very different kinds of galls, one for each of its two families a year.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
One kind of gall, the smooth spangle gall, looks like a tiny cream coloured saucer with a little cone in the middle, about 4 millimetres across.
The other kind, called Schenck's gall, is a small green oval only about 1 by 2 millimetres, well hidden on the leaf.
The spangle galls fall to the ground in late autumn and swell up once they have dropped.
Each gall holds just one larva.
A small fly sometimes moves into the spangle gall as an extra lodger.
Most asked questions about Smooth spangle gall wasp
?What is a gall?
A gall is a little lump a plant grows when an insect lays an egg in it. The young insect lives and eats inside.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Neuroterus albipes
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Cynipidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Cynipidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Neuroterus albipes (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 Rosser1954 Roger Griffith. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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